Founding Backend Engineer

Novaflow (YC S25); San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary and equity

401(k) with company match

Unlimited PTO + federal holidays

Monthly health and wellness stipend

Meals covered in office

Job summary

A biotech startup in San Francisco is looking for a Backend Developer to build and maintain APIs and cloud infrastructure. The ideal candidate has 2+ years of experience with backend services, strong knowledge of SQL, and proficiency in Python and Node.js. The role offers a competitive salary, equity, and benefits including unlimited PTO and wellness stipends. Join a fast-growing team and work closely with founders on impactful projects.

Qualifications

• 2+ years building and running backend services in production.
• Deep SQL knowledge and data modeling experience required.
• Good communicator who can explain technical decisions clearly.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain APIs and backend services in Python, Go, or similar.
• Set up and manage cloud infrastructure on AWS or GCP.
• Design data models and optimize queries.

Skills

Backend services

Cloud platforms

SQL and NoSQL databases

Python

Node.js

Terraform

Docker

Kubernetes

Education

Bachelor's or Master’s in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

GCP

Job description

About Novaflow Novaflow is the AI data analyst for biology labs. Analytics is the bottleneck for scientific discovery. Biologists have to outsource analysis to expensive bioinformaticians or core services and wait weeks or months for results. We're solving this by putting analysis directly back into the hands of researchers, allowing them to go from raw data to publication-ready insights and visualizations in days instead of months. We're well-funded, growing extremely fast, and backed by leading investors including Y Combinator and BioRender. This role is in-person at our San Francisco office. The founding team works side by side every day to make fast decisions and ship.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain APIs and backend services in Python, Go, or similar
• Set up and manage cloud infrastructure on AWS or GCP
• Work with SQL and NoSQL databases, optimize queries, design data models
• Build data pipelines and integrations with third-party services
• Manage data infrastructure (storage, compute) for large-scale workloads
• Set up CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and observability
• Help build the engineering team and establish how we work

Requirements

• Bachelor\'s or Master\'s in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
• 2+ years building and running backend services in production
• Strong with cloud platforms, Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes
• Deep SQL knowledge and data modeling experience
• Proficient in Python and Node.js for APIs and services
• Experience with microservices, service-to-service communication, and API design
• Familiar with CI/CD, monitoring, and keeping production systems healthy
• Good communicator who can explain technical decisions clearly

Nice to Have

• Experience with computational biology or scientific computing workloads
• Go experience
• Experience with event-driven architectures or message queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS)
• Startup background

Why Join Us?

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity as a founding team member
• 401(k) with company match
• Unlimited PTO + federal holidays
• Monthly health and wellness stipend
• Meals covered when you're in the office (lunch daily, dinner when you're working late)
• Team offsites and company events
• If you're curious about being a founder one day, this is your front-row seat. You'll work side by side with the founders and have full visibility into product strategy, customer conversations, and fundraising as we scale.