Senior II/ Staff Software Engineer, Platform Operations

Lilasciences; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Lila Sciences is seeking a Senior II/Staff Software Engineer to design, build and operate platform operations software across services and internal tools. You will work close to infrastructure, reliability, CI/CD, and cloud systems to raise performance and delivery speed.

You’ll collaborate with ML engineers and scientific teams to support inference workloads, automation, and security, delivering durable software that scales with the platform.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience building production applications, services, or systems.
• Strong backend development skills in Python, TypeScript, Go, or similar languages.
• Experience designing APIs, services, automation workflows, and internal developer tools.
• Practical experience using agentic coding tools to improve engineering quality and output.
• Working knowledge of cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, Kubernetes, and deployment systems.
• Strong debugging skills across application code, distributed systems, and production environments.
• Ability to design maintainable systems with clear interfaces, observability, and secure defaults.
• Strong communication skills and a track record of cross-functional engineering collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Design and build production applications, services, and internal tools for Platform Operations.
• Develop backend services, APIs, automation systems, and workflow integrations.
• Use agentic coding tools to accelerate delivery while improving code quality and test coverage.
• Build deployment and release workflows that make software delivery faster and safer.
• Improve reliability, observability, and operational readiness across software systems.
• Partner with infrastructure and platform teams on Kubernetes, AWS, CI/CD, and security.
• Create developer-friendly tooling that helps engineering teams ship and operate services.
• Debug complex issues across application code, infrastructure, and production environments.
• Apply sound software design practices to systems that need to scale and evolve.

Skills

Backend development

API design

Cloud infrastructure

Distributed systems

Debugging

Observability

Software design

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

CI/CD

Terraform

GitHub Actions

GitLab CI

Job description

Your Impact at LILA

The Senior II/ Staff Software Engineer, Platform Operations will design, build, and operate the software applications, services, and systems that support Lila’s product and delivery platforms. This role is for a strong software developer who is comfortable working close to infrastructure, reliability, CI/CD, and cloud systems.

You will build production software across application services, internal tools, automation systems, deployment workflows, and reliability platforms. The right person brings strong software engineering fundamentals, product-minded execution, and the ability to use agentic coding tools to raise quality, increase delivery speed, and produce results beyond conventional software development approaches.

This role works closely with software engineers, ML engineers, and scientific teams to support platform operations, inference workloads, experiment orchestration, and application security. It is best suited for someone who wants to build durable software systems while improving how those systems are designed, deployed, monitored, and operated.

What You'll Be Building

• Design and build production applications, services, and internal tools for Platform Operations.
• Develop backend services, APIs, automation systems, and workflow integrations.
• Use agentic coding tools to accelerate delivery while improving code quality and test coverage.
• Build deployment and release workflows that make software delivery faster and safer.
• Improve reliability, observability, and operational readiness across software systems.
• Partner with infrastructure and platform teams on Kubernetes, AWS, CI/CD, and security.
• Create developer-friendly tooling that helps engineering teams ship and operate services.
• Debug complex issues across application code, infrastructure, and production environments.
• Apply sound software design practices to systems that need to scale and evolve.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• 5+ years of software engineering experience building production applications, services, or systems.
• Strong backend development skills in Python, TypeScript, Go, or similar languages.
• Experience designing APIs, services, automation workflows, and internal developer tools.
• Practical experience using agentic coding tools to improve engineering quality and output.
• Working knowledge of cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, Kubernetes, and deployment systems.
• Strong debugging skills across application code, distributed systems, and production environments.
• Ability to design maintainable systems with clear interfaces, observability, and secure defaults.
• Strong communication skills and a track record of cross-functional engineering collaboration.

Bonus Points For

• Experience building platform, DevOps, SRE, or infrastructure-adjacent software systems.
• Familiarity with AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, Helm, GitHub Actions, or GitLab CI.
• Experience improving observability, deployment safety, incident response, or operational tooling.
• Background with security-minded software delivery, including secrets, access controls, scanning, or supply chain practices.
• Experience using AI or agentic development workflows for testing, refactoring, documentation, or delivery automation.
• Experience supporting ML, inference, scientific, or data-intensive workloads

Compensation

We offer competitive base compensation with bonus potential and generous early-stage equity. Your final offer will reflect your background, expertise, and expected impact.

U.S. Benefits.

Full-time U.S. employees receive a comprehensive benefits program including medical, dental, and vision coverage; employer-paid life and disability insurance; flexible time off with generous company wide holidays; paid parental leave; an educational assistance program; commuter benefits, including bike share memberships for office based employees; and a company subsidized lunch program.

International Benefits.

Full-time employees outside the U.S. receive a comprehensive benefits program tailored to their region. USD salary ranges apply only to U.S.-based positions; international salaries are set to local market.

Expected Base Salary Range

$180,000 — $280,000 USD

About LILA

Lila Sciences is building Scientific Superintelligence™ to solve humankind's greatest challenges. We believe science is the most inspiring frontier for AI. Rather than hard-coding expert knowledge into tools, LILA builds systems that can learn for themselves.

LILA combines advanced AI models with proprietary AI Science Factory™ instruments into an operating system for science that executes the entire scientific method autonomously, accelerating discovery at unprecedented speed, scale, and impact across medicine, materials, and energy. Learn more at www.lila.ai.

Guided by our core values of truth, trust, curiosity, grit, and velocity, we move with startup speed while tackling problems of historic importance.

We’re All In

Lila Sciences iscommitted to equal employment opportunityregardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

Information you provide during your application process will be handled in accordance with our Candidate Privacy Policy.

A Note to Agencies

Lila Sciences does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Lila Sciences or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Lila Science’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Lila Sciences, and Lila Sciences will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.