Software Engineer, Applications (App Foundations) (High Seniority)

We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era.

When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done.

Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma.

We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it's core to how we work, and we're committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day-to-day. As part of our interview process, you'll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today.

ROLE OVERVIEW

The App Foundations group — comprised of our Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams — builds the surfaces and systems at the heart of the Benchling experience. On one side, that's how scientists capture their work every day — the Notebook and the structured data-input tables where experimental data becomes clean, structured, and analyzable. On the other, it's the enterprise lifecycle capabilities that make that data trustworthy at scale: audit trails, review and approval, exports, and backups. These are the features that show up in FDA submissions and GxP-regulated workflows, and they're what lets Benchling's largest customers — internationally recognizable names developing some of the world's most innovative treatments — operate with confidence in regulated environments.

As a Software Engineer at the High Seniority level, you will be the senior engineering authority for the Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams — owning horizontally impactful systems while directly enabling the product features enterprise customers depend on. This role sits squarely at the intersection of platform and product work, and demands both deep technical expertise and strong product sense. You will also serve as an IC leader across the broader Applications division, helping set engineering direction that reaches well beyond any single team.

This role reports to the Head of Engineering for Applications and works day-to-day as the senior IC anchor for the Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams. 

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Serve as the senior technical authority for the Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams, driving the design and development of the Notebook, structured data-input, and enterprise lifecycle systems that anchor the Benchling product.

• Independently architect and implement solutions to complex, open-ended problems — from system architecture to backend models and APIs to rich frontend UI — in areas such as comprehensive audit coverage, review and approval flows, scalable export systems, backups, and document lifecycle management.

• Lead large, multi-quarter initiatives: break down ambiguous requirements into concrete technical plans and iterative delivery milestones, designing for scale and reliability across a growing enterprise customer base.

• Use technical decision-making as a tool of engineering strategy — knowing when to leverage existing platform capabilities, when to take on technical debt deliberately, and when to preserve optionality for the long term.

• Act as a force multiplier across the Applications division: help set engineering direction, raise standards for quality and architecture, and influence technical choices beyond your immediate teams.

• Provide technical leadership through code review, architectural guidance, and mentorship of engineers across all experience levels.

• Partner closely with product management, design, and cross-functional stakeholders to translate customer needs — including regulatory and compliance needs — into technical solutions.

• Explore and evaluate opportunities to leverage AI and LLMs to improve data capture, audit reporting, and compliance workflows for our customers.

• Collaborate with other teams to ensure our horizontal systems integrate seamlessly and enable product development across the organization.

• Own end-to-end delivery of critical features — from planning and development through deployment, maintenance, and monitoring — and help scale our tooling, engineering processes, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding. 

QUALIFICATIONS

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a demonstrated progression of increasing scope and impact.

• Experience as a technical lead on significant projects involving multiple engineers across multiple quarters.

• Strong experience building backend systems and APIs for cloud-based web applications, plus the ability to build full-stack when needed. Our stack is a comprehensive React frontend and a Python backend on a predominantly relational data model in Postgres; direct experience is appreciated but not required if you can pick it up quickly.

• Proven ability to design scalable, robust architectures that align with business requirements and long-term maintainability, especially for horizontal systems that many teams build on.

• Track record of independently scoping and driving initiative-level work whose impact spans multiple teams and shapes an entire product area or division.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills — able to produce clear technical designs and use influence rooted in technical expertise to align other engineers on an implementation strategy.

• Demonstrated ability to mentor and develop other engineers, raising the team's bar in areas such as testing, performance, and maintainability.

• Interest in learning about life sciences. Prior biotech knowledge is appreciated but not required; enthusiasm to learn is essential. (Experience with audit, compliance, or GxP-regulated software is a plus.)

HOW WE WORK

We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday).

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Benchling welcomes everyone.

We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences.

We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.