Lead Platform Engineer: Cloud, AI & Bioinformatics

True; South San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 205,000 - 235,000; Full time

Job summary

A biotechnology company in South San Francisco, CA is seeking an experienced infrastructure leader to helm compute, data, AI, and security infrastructure for sequencing operations. This hands-on leadership role bridges laboratory systems with cloud platforms and data workflows that enable scientific work.

You will own services that orchestrate lab devices, build scalable cloud pipelines, and design reliable distributed systems for large-scale bioinformatics workloads.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in platform/backend/infrastructure engineering.
• Experience at a scaling startup with growth.
• Strong AWS orchestration with ECS, Batch, Step Functions; Python backend with FastAPI or Django.
• Experience designing reliable distributed systems and state machines.
• Linux server administration and familiarity with Celery or SQS.
• Experience leading cross-functional projects and hands-on contributor.
• Familiar with AI tooling; building LLM/agent systems is valuable.
• Technical degree or equivalent; curiosity about biotechnology.

Responsibilities

• Own services that orchestrate laboratory devices, including robots and sequencers, plus the data ingestion pipeline.
• Build cloud infrastructure and data pipelines to store, process, and deliver sequencing data.
• Design reliable systems for orchestrating large-scale bioinformatics workloads, including queues, workflows, and scheduling.
• Develop AI infrastructure and internal tools for operational quality monitoring, logistics coordination, and adaptive bioinformatics analysis.
• Lead cross-functional projects from problem definition through production, connecting architectural decisions to business impact.
• Contribute directly to implementation while mentoring engineers and communicating across scientific and engineering teams.

Skills

AWS ECS/Batch

Python

Distributed systems

Linux admin

Mentoring engineers

AI tooling familiarity

Education

Bachelor's degree in a related field

Tools

FastAPI

Django

Celery/SQS

S3/Cloud storage

Job description

A biotechnology company in South San Francisco, CA is seeking an experienced infrastructure leader to helm compute, data, AI, and security infrastructure for sequencing operations. This hands-on leadership role bridges laboratory systems with cloud platforms and data workflows that enable scientific work.

You will own services that orchestrate lab devices, build scalable cloud pipelines, and design reliable distributed systems for large-scale bioinformatics workloads.