Director, Software Engineering — AI-Driven Full‑Stack Leader

Element Biosciences; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 254,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Discretionary annual bonus

Health insurance

401k with company match

Flexible paid time off

Job summary

Element Biosciences is seeking a Director of Software Engineering in San Diego, on-site. The role leads frontend, backend, cloud, instrument software, and CLI/API efforts across research and regulated markets.

It combines hands-on coding with leadership to drive architecture, design reviews, and timely delivery of product roadmaps. The candidate will mentor teams, own hiring decisions, and champion AI-driven SDLC practices while coordinating with product, hardware, chemistry, and QMS teams to

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience
• 3+ years directly managing engineering teams
• Hands-on in full stack: frontend, backend, cloud
• Experience with regulated software workflows
• Experience shipping ML/AI features

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of software developers spanning frontend, backend, cloud, and instrument software
• Set technical direction, define priorities, and align team execution with company goals and product roadmaps
• Own hiring, 1:1s, performance reviews, career development, and resourcing decisions for the team
• Foster a culture of ownership, quality, collaboration, and continuous improvement
• Manage team budget, capacity planning, and cross-team dependencies; partner with peer leaders across Informatics, AI, Product, Hardware, and Chemistry
• Champion agentic SDLC practices -- Cursor, Claude, and AI-driven workflows
• Contribute to overall software processes, practices, training, and quality/security assurances
• Contribute hands-on across the stack: frontend (React), backend (Go), cloud services (AWS), Temporal, Ubuntu, CLI/API tooling
• Drive architecture and design for customer-facing products and internal tooling; run design reviews
• Own end-to-end delivery for one or more product areas
• Partner with product owners, chemistry, hardware, and adjacent software teams
• Debug cross-system issues and customer-blocking problems
• Prototype quickly with AI tools to validate ideas and de-risk approaches
• Advocate for engineering systems and workflows that accelerate velocity
• Support regulated software development and V&V documentation
• Own or oversee design controls and traceability for SaMD or instrument software
• Partner with regulatory affairs and QMS to support audits and submissions

Skills

Team leadership

Software architecture

Go

React

AWS

AI tooling

Cross-functional collaboration

Hands-on coding

Regulated software

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

Go

React

MongoDB

Redis

gRPC

GraphQL

Temporal

Ubuntu

AWS

Job description

Element Biosciences is seeking a Director of Software Engineering in San Diego, on-site. The role leads frontend, backend, cloud, instrument software, and CLI/API efforts across research and regulated markets.

It combines hands-on coding with leadership to drive architecture, design reviews, and timely delivery of product roadmaps. The candidate will mentor teams, own hiring decisions, and champion AI-driven SDLC practices while coordinating with product, hardware, chemistry, and QMS teams to