Senior Software Engineer

Do you want to develop software that helps program biology? Join the Software Team at Ginkgo Bioworks and become a part of the next great technological revolution - constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. This is your chance to not only develop algorithms and frameworks at the cutting edge of software technologies, but also work side-by-side with the brightest scientists, organism engineers, and more. You'll have the opportunity to contribute to the exciting frontiers of synthetic biology, including DNA design, genome sequencing, and automating experiments at scales previously unheard of.

At Ginkgo, our mission is to make biology easier to engineer.  Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.  Today, our foundry is developing over 40 different organisms to make different products across multiple industries. We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer who will design, develop, test, and deploy the software used by Ginkgo scientists to create these new organisms, conduct experiments, control lab robots, and analyze massive amounts of data. You'll collaborate with a team of talented and diverse engineers, product managers, experts in data analysis and bioinformatics, and, of course, your customers – the dozens of biologists and chemists at Ginkgo. 

Our tech stack includes AWS, Docker, Django, REST, GraphQL, React, MySQL, Postgres, Elastic Search, Airflow, and other modern tools and frameworks. Our languages of choice are Python and Javascript. We don't expect you to be an expert in every platform, but we do expect that you have a solid foundation in computer science and have no problem mastering the technologies that we use today (and will adopt tomorrow). And, most importantly, while you may not have a background in biology, you must be passionate about Ginkgo's mission of making biology easier to engineer.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement software solutions that address current needs of Ginkgo bioengineers. These solutions could be a microservice, standalone tool, user facing web application, data pipeline, etc.
• Collaborate with your tech lead and product manager to define milestones and deliverables.
• Work as a member of an agile team, attend scrum meetings, and review code produced by your peers.
• Write automated tests for your solution and oversee its deployment.
• Monitor the production environment to detect and address customers' issues.
• Prototype new ideas, algorithms, and frameworks.

Desired Experience and Capabilities

• BS, MS, or PhD in computer science with 5+ years of industry experience
• Proven track record in full-stack development
• Experience with building distributed systems
• Experience with code management systems, CI/CD, AWS, or any other cloud experience a plus
• Familiarity with biology a plus
• Previous startup experience a plus
• Eagerness to work hand-in-hand with the Ginkgo's foundry team to architect the next generation of foundry for engineering organisms

To learn more about our Software Team and how we're growing Ginkgo's platform, check out our team page. as well as some of the team's blog posts:

Using React Memo for a More Performant User Experience

Building a Data Processing Pipeline for NGS Part 1

Ginkgo's COVID-19 Pivot: Decisiveness and Agility

Day in the Life: Chris

Day in the Life: Dan

To learn more about Ginkgo, check out some recent press:

What is it really like to take your company public via a SPAC? One Boston biotech shares its journey (Fortune)

Ginkgo Bioworks resizes the definition of going big in biotech, raising $2.5B in a record SPAC deal that weighs in with a whopping $15B-plus valuation (Endpoints News)

Ginkgo Bioworks Redirects Its Biotech Platform to Coronavirus (WSJ)

The Life Factory: Synthetic Organisms From This $1.4 Billion Startup Will Revolutionize Manufacturing (Forbes)

The engineering of living organisms could soon start changing everything (The Economist)

Synthetic Bio Pioneer Ginkgo Raises $290 Million in New Funding (Bloomberg)

Ginkgo Bioworks raises $350 million fund for biotech spinouts (Reuters)

Ginkgo Bioworks Is Turning Human Cells into On-Demand Factories (WIRED)

Can This Company Convince You to Love GMOs? (The Atlantic)

This food tech startup just raised $90 million to make it easier to invent new plant-based meats (Fast Company)

We also feel that it’s important to point out the obvious here – there’s a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.  

We’re developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best chance that it’s something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. Therefore, it’s critical that we incorporate the diverse voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of biology.

It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants.