Lead Application Engineer

Alden Scientific; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity options

Health benefits

Flexible PTO

Professional development

Job summary

Alden Scientific in Cambridge, MA seeks a Lead Application Engineer to steer technical design and deliver scalable customer-facing applications and core internal systems, including data collection, insights, finance, inventory, and logistics.

You will mentor engineers, own architecture across frontend (React) and backend, collaborate with product managers, and drive modern engineering practices and AI-assisted development to improve reliability and performance.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience on production web apps and scalable architectures.
• Strong proficiency in React and modern frontend ecosystem.
• Experience designing RESTful and GraphQL APIs for complex workflows.
• Experience partnering with Product Managers and leading agile ceremonies.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical design and drive feature roadmaps.
• Design architecture for customer-facing web apps and integrations.
• Conduct investigations and POCs to evaluate solutions.
• Run daily standups and delegate work across the engineering team.
• Establish patterns for frontend/backend quality via code reviews and standards.
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted software development and modern practices.
• Improve observability, dashboards, and reliability metrics.
• Lead architecture reviews for major initiatives.
• Ensure data integrity across transactional systems, finance tracking, and inventory workflows.

Skills

React

REST/GraphQL APIs

Full-stack

CI/CD

Agile

Mentoring

Systems thinking

Tools

Terraform

Airflow

Spark

dbt

Job description

The Role

We're looking for a Lead Application Engineer to serve as the technical lead driving engineering excellence across our customer-facing applications and core internal systems — including data collection, insights, finance, sample and inventory management, member services, and logistics.

This role is built for a full-stack systems thinker — someone who naturally looks across frontend and backend to see how customer-facing applications, transactional systems, the data layer, and engineering workflows fit together as one cohesive product platform. You'll shape technical design, delegate work effectively, and partner closely with Product Managers to translate business requirements into scalable engineering solutions.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role combining software architecture, system design, feature execution, and mentorship. The primary focus is building robust, scalable applications that power the end-to-end customer and operational experience.

What You'll Do

Lead technical design and execution

• Partner closely with Product Managers to define feature roadmaps, refine technical requirements, and deliver impactful application capabilities.
• Lead system design and architecture for customer-facing web applications, member services, finance integrations, logistics, and sample/inventory management workflows.
• Conduct technical investigations and build proof-of-concepts (POCs) to evaluate solutions, mitigate technical risk, and drive informed architectural decisions.
• Run daily standups, break down complex initiatives, and delegate work effectively across the application engineering team.
• Establish strong patterns for frontend (React) and backend software quality through rigorous code reviews and engineering standards.
• Standardize QA/QC practices and establish consistent engineering quality across teams.
• Drive adoption of AI-assisted software development and modern engineering practices.
• Improve engineering visibility through metrics, dashboards, and operational health indicators.
• Lead architecture and design reviews for major technical initiatives.
• Ensure high data integrity and reliability across transactional processing systems, financial tracking, and inventory workflows.

Build scalable platforms

• Architect distributed backend services and web applications that power seamless collection, insights delivery, and member service experiences.
• Evaluate platform performance and identify bottlenecks before they become production issues.
• Improve observability, reliability, resiliency, and capacity planning.
• Develop reference architectures and reusable platform patterns that accelerate engineering teams.
• Design scalable data models and APIs supporting inventory, logistics tracking, and financial operations.

What You Bring

• 7+ years of software engineering experience building production web applications, user-facing features, and scalable application architectures.
• Strong proficiency in React and the modern frontend web development ecosystem.
• Strong experience designing and integrating RESTful and GraphQL APIs to support complex web application workflows.
• Proven expertise in full-stack transactional application architecture, relational database schema design, and maintaining data consistency across user workflows.
• Demonstrated experience partnering with Product Managers to scope features, define specs, and execute efficiently.
• Experience running agile ceremonies, leading daily standups, and delegating work across engineering teams.
• Ability to rapidly build POCs to validate technical approaches and guide architectural choices.
• Experience with software quality, testing strategies, CI/CD, and engineering best practices.
• A systems-thinking mindset and the ability to understand complex systems quickly and find scalable, pragmatic solutions.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence technical direction without direct authority.

Preferred Qualifications / Skills

• Domain experience building web applications for healthcare, member services, logistics, inventory management, or finance platforms.
• Web application deployment pipelines, cloud platform integration, and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or similar).
• Familiarity with data layer integrations and consuming data platform workflows (Spark, Airflow, dbt) within web applications.
• Mentoring senior engineers and leading architecture across multiple teams.
• Agentic frameworks (e.g., LangChain, CrewAI) and building evaluation harnesses for LLM/agentic applications.

Why Join Us

• Impact: Your work will directly support the multi-omic science and AI models that empower individuals to take control of their health.
• Growth: A clear trajectory toward Staff Engineer or Engineering Lead roles.
• Innovation: Expand the frontier of data-driven, AI-informed health management.
• Collaboration: Work alongside scientists, engineers, and product teams redefining health management.
• Benefits: Competitive salary, equity options, health benefits, flexible PTO, and professional development support.

Hybrid role based in Cambridge, MA; occasional travel may be required.