LEAD PLATFORM ENGINEER

VSG Business Solutions LLC; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

VSG Business Solutions LLC is seeking a technical lead for compute, data, AI, and security infrastructure powering sequencing operations. You will own core services orchestrating lab devices and data ingestion, and build global cloud pipelines delivering terabytes of data.

The role targets senior engineers with startup experience who can design distributed systems, mentor teams, and drive AI tooling initiatives in a fast-paced environment in San Francisco.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of platform/backend/infrastructure engineering experience.
• Startup experience at scale (Seed–Series C).
• Design and ship reliable distributed systems (queues, orchestration, state machines).
• Led projects and mentored engineers on small teams.
• Former founder or founding engineer.

Responsibilities

• Own core services that orchestrate lab devices (robots, sequencers, on‑prem Linux servers) and the data ingestion pipeline.
• Build cloud infrastructure and data pipelines to house, process, and deliver terabytes of sequencing data.
• Design infrastructure to orchestrate millions of bioinformatics tasks (queues, workflow orchestration, scheduling).
• Build AI infrastructure and tooling to enable agentic systems (Quality, Logistics, Bioinformatics Agents).
• Lead and mentor engineers, contributing to architectural decisions and roadmap.

Skills

Cloud infrastructure design

Distributed systems

Backend engineering

Team leadership

Startup experience

Education

BS in CS/Engineering/Math/Physics

Tools

AWS (ECS, Batch, StepFunctions)

Python backend (FastAPI/Django)

Celery/SQS

Linux server administration

LLM/agent tooling

Job description

JOB Description :

Technical lead for the compute, data, AI, and security infrastructure that runs our sequencing operation.

You will own core services that orchestrate lab devices (robots, sequencers, on-prem Linux servers) and the data ingestion pipeline

Build cloud infrastructure and data pipelines to house, process, and deliver terabytes of sequencing data

Design infrastructure to orchestrate millions of bioinformatics tasks (queues, workflow orchestration, scheduling)

Build AI infrastructure and internal tooling to enable agentic systems:

• Quality Scientist Agents - monitor operations end-to-end, surface anomalies, and intervene/escalate when quality or reliability issues appear
• Logistics Agents - coordinate drivers around the world to move packages to labs and carriers
• Bioinformatics Coding Agents - long-running agents for adaptive analysis of diverse sample types with unknown/shifting data distributions

This opportunity aligns with your focus on backend and infrastructure roles in San Francisco within the AI industry. You will be working with a top 1% hiring manager who maintains a streamlined three-step interview process, including a final call with the CEO.

Work experience

• 8+ years of experience in platform/backend/infrastructure engineering
• Must have impactful experience at a startup while it has scaled (ideally Seed - Series C)
• Can design + build reliable distributed systems (queues, orchestration, state machines) and ship them to production
• Led projects and mentored engineers on small teams
• Former successful founder or founding engineer

Education

• BS in CS, Engineering, Math, Physics or equivalent technical degree

Hard skills

• Strong AWS orchestration (ECS, Batch, StepFunctions) + Python backend work (FastAPI/Django)
• Linux server administration and distributed task queues (Celery/SQS)
• Experience building LLM/agent systems (tooling, evaluation, safety/permissions, prompt + workflow design)

Soft skills

• Very hungry and wanting to take a step up in their career. Senior/Staff - > Lead engineer

Miscellaneous

• Up to date with newest AI tooling
• Genuine curiosity about biotech/science domains

strongly prefers candidates who completed their undergraduate (bachelor's) degree in the US, Canada, or Europe,

TRAITS TO AVOID

• Too senior and no longer an IC
• Only experience is big tech that doesn't specialize in managing data at scale.
• Not looking for career FAANG engineers.
• International students coming from master's programs
• Job hoppy (multiple stints of