Staff / Principal Software Engineer
Builds and scales a backend platform integrating AI-driven biological simulations for drug discovery, connecting APIs, databases, and AI inference engines to enable virtual cell experimentation and hypothesis generation for biologists and researchers.
- Compensation
- $250K–$350K / yr
- Location
- Palo Alto, CA
- Work setup
- Onsite
- Seniority
- Principal
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 8+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 8+ years of industry experience at Staff/Principal level, building production web services, scalable APIs, and distributed backend systems
- Mastery of clean architecture, modular system design, and highly maintainable/performant code
- Hands-on experience integrating large-scale AI/ML inference systems into production environments
- Ability to solve complex, ambiguous systems problems from concept to scalable execution
- Strong cross-functional leadership and communication skills bridging engineering, AI research, and scientific product teams
Nice to have
- Domain knowledge in computational biology, genomics, or scientific software
- Experience with scientific simulation tools or workflow orchestration
- Experience building unified computational frameworks for AI-native platforms
Full description
GenBio AI is an AI for Science company on a mission to make biology fully computable. We are building AIDO (AI-Driven Digital Organism) to simulate living systems, decode biology holistically, and accelerate medical and scientific research. Our first step toward that mission is AIDO Cell, the first virtual cell world model that holistically simulates cell biology from molecules up to whole-cell behavior. It enables researchers to run experiments virtually, predicting how cells respond to genetic changes, drugs and other interventions before going into the lab. It is supported by AIDO Foundry, an AI-builds-AI engineering framework for automating virtual cell development, and AIDO Lab, an interface to digitally run experiments and observe the results. Together they form the foundation for a new paradigm in AI-driven drug discovery, bioengineering, and fundamental biomedical research.
We are seeking an experienced Staff to Principal-level Software Engineer to build the user-facing platform that brings these capabilities to computational biologists, experimental scientists, and pharmaceutical researchers. This is a senior individual contributor role for engineers who enjoy solving challenging systems problems while working closely with AI researchers and product teams.
Responsibilities
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Act as a senior technical leader to build the software platform for programmable biology, developing production-grade backend services and APIs for our Virtual Cell products.
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Design clean, robust interfaces that seamlessly connect frontend applications, core business logic, massive biological databases, and state-of-the-art AI inference engines.
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Architect and develop highly scalable systems for complex biological simulations, experiment management, workflow orchestration, and the processing of multimodal biological data.
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Drive continuous improvements in platform performance and reliability through highly efficient architecture design, strategic caching, asynchronous execution, and optimized distributed infrastructure.
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Collaborate closely with AI researchers to translate cutting-edge foundation models into reliable, user-facing scientific products that enable virtual perturbations and hypothesis generation.
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Work cross-functionally across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and machine learning teams to deliver deeply intuitive computational experiences for biologists, experimental scientists, and pharmaceutical researchers.
Qualifications:
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Extensive industry experience (typically 8+ years) operating at a Staff or Principal level, with a proven track record of building production web services, scalable APIs, and complex distributed backend systems.