Over the coming years, biotech will fundamentally rewrite the way we live. Gene editing and cell therapy are dramatically changing how we treat cancer and other major illnesses. Biofuels and biomaterials are transforming the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, and the makeup of everyday objects. Crop science and synthetic biology are producing sustainable and ethical food. Benchling’s mission is to accelerate the research that propels us towards this reality, and magnify its impact, through modern software.
Every day, scientists around the world use Benchling’s applications, platform, & analytics in their efforts to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. For these scientists, Benchling is the central technology they use to conduct their research. Our customers include pharmaceutical giants, leading biotechs, and the world’s most renowned research institutes.
ROLE OVERVIEW
- You will be a core engineer in the Search Engineering Team, which is responsible for one of the most important systems that power Benchling's platform and applications.
- You will be initially focusing on building and scaling the Search Infrastructure - which includes the Search indices, indexing pipelines and real-time updates.
- We use ElasticSearch as our Search-engine, deployed in a multi-tenant system in the Cloud. You will be the expert in setting the direction for managing this evolving infrastructure. This will also include the dev-ops model of ownership of the clusters.
- You will work on Search applications specific to the industry like DNA-sequence search, BLAST search etc.
- You will design and implement backend models and API endpoints for complex scientific workflows.
- You will work closely with product managers, designers, marketing, and sales to ensure the right context is being shared.
- You will help rapidly scale our product and team. As a member of the engineering team, you'll be an integral part of how we mature our tooling, best practices, engineering processes, and hiring.
- You will be working along with some of the most talented folks in the industry.
If you are to graduate with your Bachelor's or Master's degree in class of 2021-2022, please consider applying to our Software Engineer, New Graduate position here.
YOU MIGHT WORK ON
Check out our engineering blog for some examples of past work. Here are some other examples of recent and future projects in the Search Team:
- Project: Next-gen Search for Benchling - Over the next year, we are expecting to handle 10-100X the amount of data as more and more customers move towards automation. We will need to scale out our existing search infra to support this reliably. Hence, we are building out the next-gen search system for Benchling using Elasticsearch to support new data types and use cases across the platform.
- Project: Domain-specific searches - For the last 5 years, we've been a biology focused company, but we're just starting our exploration into chemistry. We will building out search support for small molecules, that are represented as graphs. We are building out sub-structure search, similarity search, and duplicate checking in the registry. We are also building out support for BLAST, which finds regions of similarity between biological sequences in Benchling. We are implementing these in the context of our next-gen Elasticsearch-based search system to support billions of entities in Benchling.
- Project: Search Relevance - We are always striving to present the best results to the user. This should incorporate various factors into the calculations - user’s intent, context (type-ahead vs full-search results), search-corpus, level-of-access etc.
ABOUT YOU
- 5+ years of experience in software engineering.
- 2+ years of working with ElasticSearch is strongly desired.
- Multiple years of building search and related user-facing applications.
- Build software with a product-first approach. You ship code quickly and care about the real world impact of your code.
- Have strong abilities in problem solving and iterating on feedback.
- Are interested in learning more about life science (prior knowledge is not required; desire to learn is a must).
IF YOU ARE SEEKING A NEW GRAD POSITION / INTERNSHIP:
- Apply for our Summer 2022 software engineering internship program here.
- For new grads, class of 2021-2022, who are seeking a full time position after graduation, please apply to our Software Engineer, New Graduate position here.
Benchling welcomes everyone. We believe every member of our team enriches our diversity and inclusion by broadening our ways of problem-solving for future challenges. Even if you don't meet 100% of the qualifications for this job, we strongly encourage you to apply.
LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES
- Admit mistakes and shortcomings
- Deliver results
- Disagree and commit
- Obsess over customers
- Rely on work ethic
- Show empathy
- Recruit and develop the best
- Sweat the details
- Think and communicate clearly
- Unite around the mission
PERKS AND BENEFITS
- Work with a talented yet humble team
- Competitive compensation & equity package
- Weekly virtual social events, and annual company retreats
- 401k, Medical, dental, and vision insurance (US Employees Only)
- Monthly health & wellness stipend (Currently US Employees Only)
- Yearly educational stipend (Currently US Employees Only)
- Flexible & Generous Vacation Policy: If you feel you need a break, you can talk directly with your manager to find coverage and support while you are out of the office. Need time off to vote? We've got you covered.
- Quarterly company-wide mental health days off
- Holiday Shut-down: company-wide holiday shut-down between Christmas Eve and New Years
- Major US and EMEA holidays observed
- To support remote work conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, Benchling provides each employee a one-time stipend of $1,000(USD) upon commencing employment, and additional discounted employee purchase plans for home-office equipment.
In following best practices and safety protocols, all Benchling employees are expected to work remotely until we are further advised that it is safe for employees to resume work in their respective office locations.
We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not 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.