Software Engineer II

At Element Biosciences, we are passionate about our mission to empower the scientific community with more freedom and flexibility to accelerate our collective impact on humanity. We have built a highly efficient product-driven organization where employees can learn, grow, and thrive in a challenging but encouraging environment. We are committed to scientific integrity, collegiality, honesty, objectivity, and openness.

We are seeking a motivated and capable Software Engineer II to join our instrument development team. In this role, you’ll work closely with experienced engineers to design and develop backend services and UI applications for our cutting-edge, cloud-integrated life sciences instruments. You will contribute to feature development, participate in code reviews, and engage in problem-solving across the software lifecycle, relying on senior team members to validate architectural decisions.

The ideal candidate has intermediate experience in backend service and UI development, enjoys working in a fast-paced collaborative environment, and demonstrates a strong drive to grow technically and contribute meaningfully to production-quality software. This is an onsite role in San Diego, California.

If you possess the following and want to make a meaningful impact, we invite you to explore this role.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with cross-functional engineering teams to build and maintain robust backend services and interactive UI features in React with Electron apps
• Contribute to the design, development, and testing of distributed systems and user-facing applications, using modern frameworks and best practices
• Support the development of containerized microservices and Linux-based applications that interface with cloud infrastructure
• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, and sprint planning, learning from and contributing to team-wide engineering excellence
• Write well-documented, well-tested code and contribute to the ongoing improvement of development and deployment pipelines
• Participate in monitoring and troubleshooting production systems, collaborating with senior engineers to identify root causes and propose solutions
• Stay current with emerging technologies and propose practical solutions that support system scalability, maintainability, and observability

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience
• 2+ years of experience in software development with a focus on backend services, UI applications, or both
• Proficiency in one or more modern programming languages such as Go and React
• Experience with reactive UI programming or kiosk-style applications (e.g., Electron)
• Experience building and maintaining RESTful or gRPC-based APIs and services
• Familiarity with Linux development environments, Docker containers, and cloud-native architectures
• Understanding of common system design patterns including message queues, worker pools, and pub/sub architectures
• Comfortable with Git, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and agile workflows
• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively within a team and communicate effectively across disciplines
• Building and designing systems that are fault tolerant, highly available, scalable and observable
• Take ownership of the entire system ensuring quality with complete automation testing
• Exposure to Snapcraft (Snaps), Ubuntu Core, or embedded Linux platforms
• Awareness of security best practices for cloud-deployed applications
• Basic familiarity with networking fundamentals and protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS)
• Basic familiarity with life sciences applications, such as sequencing, systems biology, and multiomic assays

Physical Requirements:

• Frequently moves boxes weighing up to 20 pounds

Location:

• San Diego - on-site 

Travel: 

• Up to 10% domestically or as needed

Job Type:

• Full-time, Exempt

Base Compensation Pay Range:

• $96,000 - $118,000

In addition to base compensation noted above, you will be eligible for stock options, discretionary annual bonus, no cost health insurance plans, 401k with company match, and flexible paid time off. 

Please note: Base compensation will depend on multiple factors, including geographic location, qualifications, and experience. 

We foster an environment such that all people are afforded the freedom to pursue their passions without regard to race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin, gender (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, veteran status or any other characteristics protected by law.