Software QA Engineer
Date Posted
26 Jun, 2022
Work Location
Salary Offered
Not Specified
Job Type
We are seeking driven Software Quality Assurance (QA) Engineers who will use their software testing experience to have a direct and positive impact at Ginkgo Bioworks and become a part of the next great technological revolution. At Ginkgo, we are 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 help test software built using cutting edge tools and frameworks, but also to work side-by-side with the brightest scientists, organism engineers, and more. You'll have the opportunity to contribute to exciting frontiers in the field of synthetic biology!
At Ginkgo, our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated cell programming platform (called the Foundry) for designing and building new organisms. Today, Ginkgo is developing over 40 different organisms to make different products across multiple industries. Ginkgo scientists use the Foundry 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. You will use your QA Engineering expertise to test our cell programming platform, with optimized testing programs that work across various test modalities.
As a member of this new discipline at Ginkgo, you will play a key role in defining the software testing strategy at Ginkgo. Our microservices are built using AWS, Docker, Django, REST, GraphQL, React, MySQL, Postgres, Elastic Search, Airflow, Ruby and other modern tools and frameworks. Our languages of choice are Python and Javascript. You should be passionate about making biology the next engineering discipline. The 20th century was all about bits and the awesome technology of computers; the 21st century is all about atoms and the awesome technology of biology. Ginkgo is at the forefront of this revolution. Here's your chance to change the world rather than selling more ads.
_ Please note: this position is considered remote flexible and has the capability to be residence-based, with minimum requirements to come onsite to our Boston offices once per quarter. _
Responsibilities
- Implement and maintain an automated test suite
- Create and execute test plans to evaluate new features before they’re released
- Perform exploratory testing to become intimately familiar with our approach to acceptance criteria and the user perspective, as well as ensure the quality of application functions and edge cases where we do not have test-suite coverage
- Collaborate with your tech lead, engineering manager and product manager to define key milestones and deliverables
- Work as a member of an agile team, attending scrum meetings
- Prototype new ideas, tools, and frameworks
- Lead quality processes, and guide efforts to improve development processes
Desired Experience and Capabilities
- BS/MS in computer science, or equivalent experience
- Knowledge of Biology a huge plus
- 5-7 years in Software QA engineer role that includes 1-2 years in a Lead role
- Proficiency in Python, JavaScript, Typescript and Relational Databases
- Subject matter expertise in various testing frameworks and ability to make tradeoffs between them
- Experience in security testing, performance testing, integration testing and contract testing
- Ability to test automation at different levels like API, UI, Backend, etc.
- Ability to identify the right balance between pre-production and production quality practices
- Strong attention to detail, with the ability to manage and prioritize multiple, concurrent responsibilities
- Ability to understand user needs and behaviors
- Flexibility to work in a fast-paced Agile environment, where, as we say at Ginkgo, “there will be dragons”!
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
To learn more about Ginkgo, check out some recent press:
Ginkgo Bioworks Redirects Its Biotech Platform to Coronavirus (WSJ)
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)
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.
About Ginkgo Bioworks
