Software Engineering Lead

About Arcadia:

Arcadia is a for-profit startup creation studio with a research platform and team that leverage evolutionary biology for discovery. Arcadia is a science-first company founded by and for scientists, to discover new ways to find and use organisms as sources of innovative biotechnology. They are process-oriented and are experimenting with more effective ways to bridge basic and applied science, with a primary goal of spinning out start-ups. They hope to develop a novel playbook for enabling biology-focused companies and founders. 

The Opportunity: 

As Software Engineering Lead you will be overseeing the software engineering team to enable and accelerate use of internal platform tools in the start-up studio. You will collaborate with the Discovery Research and Start-Up Studio team Leads to speed up Arcadia’s ability to strategically narrow the biological search space by advising on and working through engineering bottlenecks, with an eye on scalability. You will also drive the development of an internal software product that allows Arcadia scientists to quickly use platform tools to make decisions and track outcomes. 

Key Contributions:

- Set strategic software engineering project goals with the CEO

- Work with the Arcadia leadership team to strategize the growth of the software engineering team

- Cross functional collaboration with Discovery Research and Start-Up Studio teams; use your knowledge of biology to communicate effectively with other functions at Arcadia

- Oversee the software engineering process to build useful, fast, scalable versions of Arcadia’s unique platform tools with an eye on UI/UX design

- Engineer workflows and tools to increase throughput and predictability of the core inference platform

- Provide software engineering support, build infrastructure, conduct code reviews, and ensure computational fluency across other departments at Arcadia (lead trainings or workshops)Utilize machine learning/AI to scale and improve Arcadia’s platform predictions

- Work with the software engineering team to help drive a data centric initiative around imaging data (microscopy data that is generated in-house, a complement to genome data used for predictive modeling in biology)

- Diversify data modalities beyond sequencing alone; thinking holistically about what kinds of datasets Arcadia will ultimately need to level up the ability to predict biology (that's Arcadia’s central research question at this time)

- Drive the culture of the software engineering team to be the “Arcadian” flavor of entrepreneurship, science, and collaboration

Desired Experience:

-PhD or Master’s degree level education is preferable; Bachelor’s degree required

- 3-5+ years of experience in a leadership or senior management position at a scaling, computationally-focused biotech start-up 

-Software engineering team growth and leadership experience is required (min 5+ direct reports)

-Strong software development expertise at scale, translating ambiguous problems into clear technical solutions

- Background in data science, machine learning and/or artificial intelligence, open source software and cloud computing

- Experience working in a biotech/therapeutics start-up environment (i.e. using genomic/clinical data to develop predictive therapeutics, looking at sequencing data, using AI to predict drug targets, or building predictive platforms or tools to support research and drug development, etc.) 

- Experience taking a software product from concept to market is required; ideally experience taking a scientific/research idea through the product life cycle starting from the very early stages and guiding the research process around it

- Experience with early-stage infrastructure development and building large-scale biological data sets; ideally working with different data modalities (sequencing, imaging, etc)  

- Knowledge of molecular biology so they can map tools to scientific decision making process in biological research and collaborate with the Discovery Research team

- Ideally have experience with biological imaging data in order to help drive a new initiative around microscopy data generated in-house 

- An experienced people manager; able to meet people where they are in their learning journey

Interested applicants should apply using the link below and include a CV, cover letter, and answers to the application questions. 

The expected salary range is $225,000-$300,000 per year with generous equity and benefits, depending on experience level. The position will require the individual to be on-site at our Berkeley, California headquarters. We will review applications on a rolling basis, and the job will remain open until the position is filled.

Arcadia Science is an equal opportunity workplace; we welcome people from all backgrounds and communities. We provide competitive compensation and practical benefits to keep you happy and healthy so that you can do your best work. Please note that an offer of employment from Arcadia is contingent upon the successful clearance of a reference and background check.