ROLE OVERVIEW

As a Software Engineer working on the App Core team, you’ll drive the design and creation of the foundation that Benchling application engineers build on. Those teams have an exciting product roadmap and we give them the leverage they need to move faster while also delivering a better user experience. Features and capabilities we deliver are often on the critical path for the company’s most important product releases.

Most often, our work is to create and improve horizontal systems like notifications, configuration, data validation, and navigation information architecture but we also develop and maintain platform abstractions that make it easier to build horizontal systems in general. You’ll frequently collaborate with teams across the company as we build systems that serve not only end users but also internal and external developers.

Benchling’s application platform is becoming increasingly important as our expansion into larger, enterprise customers means higher expectations around table stakes features like notifications and application configuration, higher expectations for consistent horizontal feature implementations, and stronger guarantees that their data is clean and ready to be used to train AI systems. This role is an opportunity to build foundational horizontal features while also zooming out and thinking about what it means to build a great platform.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own projects end-to-end, from initial design, to prototype, to large-scale rollout.
• Design and architect resilient APIs, user interfaces, services, and frameworks of our application platform.
• Work hand-in-hand with product managers, designers, and fellow engineers to understand needs and shape them into scalable software solutions.
• Ensure high quality and performance of our systems through comprehensive testing, monitoring, and optimization.
• Mentor other engineers and be a major multiplier across the team.
• Drive the evolution of our product and team. As a member of the engineering team, you will be an integral part of how we mature our tooling, engineering processes, and hiring.

Check out our engineering blog for some examples of past work throughout Benchling. Here are some other examples of recent and future projects for App Core:

• Import localization: Most of our customers are in the US but we have many in EMEA and across the world, too. Since English is “the language of science”, it hasn’t been critical that we localize the Benchling product, yet. But, our customers in the EMEA region had major issues importing their data into Benchling because, for example, the data in their spreadsheets might use a comma as a decimal separator instead of a period (i.e. “1.234,56” == “1,234.56”). So, we built a framework for parsing localized dates and numbers and applied it to our code that manages imports. Customers can now import data using any date or number format!
• Object creation autogen: Benchling operates on object types specific to our domain like Proteins, DNA Sequences, Notebook Entries, Workflow tasks, and Boxes. Last summer, we looked at our product roadmap and realized that as an organization we'd be bottlenecked by the number of new types we could add for the products we had planned. So, the App Core team designed a tool that bundled together existing and new codegen tooling to produce the boilerplate for new types that bootstrapped them with enterprise capabilities .
• User configurable validation rules: Though Benchling started as the central hub for our customers’ data during the research phase of drug development, we’re moving deeper and deeper into development and manufacturing. As we move downstream into those processes, the rules for the data that gets into Benchling become stricter and critical to our customers’ success. We need a powerful, shared system that application teams can leverage to help admins apply custom validation rules that help scientists enter the right data, quickly.
• First-class notifications: Right now, all notifications from the Benchling product are emails. This makes sense for some notifications but for many scientists would prefer to get those notifications in the app itself to remove a context switch between the product and their email. We need to design and build in-app notifications as well as a preferences system so users can decide how and when they want to receive notifications.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Have 8-12 years of experience in software engineering, ideally in a full stack platform team.
• 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.
• Enjoy ownership and building key pieces of product and platform
• Have a keen interest in delving deeper into building Enterprise SaaS in the life sciences industry. While prior knowledge isn’t a prerequisite, an enthusiasm to learn certainly is!

SALARY RANGE

Benchling takes a market-based approach to pay. The candidate's starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and work location. For this role the base salary range is $157,250 to $212,750.

To help you determine which zone applies to your location, please see this resource. If you have questions regarding a specific location's zone designation, please contact a recruiter for additional information.

• Competitive salary and equity
• Broad range of medical, dental, and vision plans for employees and their dependents
• Fertility healthcare and family-forming benefits
• Four months of fully paid parental leave
• 401(k) + Employer Match
• Commuter benefits for in-office employees and a generous home office set up stipend for remote employees
• Mental health benefits, including therapy and coaching, for employees and their dependents
• Monthly Wellness stipend
• Learning and development stipend
• Generous and flexible vacation
• Company-wide Summer & Winter holiday shutdown
• Sabbaticals for 5-year and 10-year anniversaries

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