Senior Manager, Engineering

Prudentia Sciences; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 235,000 - 281,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Competitive salary

In-person collaboration

Job summary

Prudentia Sciences seeks a Senior Manager, Engineering to lead and grow the engineering organization behind our core platform. You will own the platform engineering function end-to-end, partner closely with AI and Product leaders, and set the technical direction for a scalable, reliable product used by deal teams and life sciences customers.

You will build a hands-on, player-coach team, drive architecture decisions, and establish processes that balance speed with quality as we scale from

Qualifications

• 8+ years of full-stack software engineering experience, including modern web apps, with AWS experience.
• 3+ years leading or managing engineering teams, ideally in startup or high-growth environments.
• Experience owning architecture for data-driven apps with APIs, async jobs, or ML backends.
• Strong frontend architecture, state management, and visualization framework knowledge, plus backend expertise.

Responsibilities

• Build, manage, and grow the engineering team with a high bar for craft.
• Define and implement engineering processes for a fast-moving startup.
• Mentor engineers and create growth paths; translate business priorities into a technical roadmap.
• Own core platform architecture and maintain scalable APIs between ML orchestration and the product.

Skills

Full-stack engineering

AWS

Team leadership

Architecture design

Frontend frameworks

Backend APIs

Security & compliance

Communication

Education

Bachelor's/Master's/PhD in CS/SE

Tools

React

GraphQL

REST APIs

CI/CD

Job description

About Prudentia Sciences

Prudentia Sciences is an AI-powered technology platform transforming how biopharma, biotech, and life sciences investors approach portfolio management, due diligence, and value/risk simulation. Our platform accelerates investment in breakthrough therapies by:

• Empowering biopharma to accelerate drug pipelines, maximize ROI, and achieve clinical and commercial success for greater patient impact
• Enabling strategic positioning of asset value during portfolio planning and dealmaking
• Equipping investors with data-driven insights to optimize capital allocation in drug asset transactions

Backed by GV (Google Ventures), SignalFire, McKesson, Iaso Ventures, and Virtue, we're on a mission to unlock the full potential of pharmaceutical R&D by empowering decision-makers with real-time, data-driven insights.

The Opportunity

We're seeking a Senior Manager, Engineering to build and lead the engineering organization behind our core platform as we scale. Reporting to the CTO and sitting alongside the Head of AI and Head of Product as part of our technology leadership team, you'll own the platform engineering function end to end: the people, the architecture, and the operational rigor that lets deal teams and biopharma customers rely on us with confidence.

This is a player-coach role. You'll set technical direction and hold a high bar on architecture, delivery & code quality, while building and leading a small but growing team of engineers as we scale from early-stage to a mature engineering organization. You'll partner closely with the Head of AI, whose team owns our ML/LLM systems, to make sure model output becomes a seamless, trustworthy part of the product experience and with the Head of Product to turn scientific and deal‑making workflows into software that our customers depend on daily.

Our platform is seeing exceptional demand in its sector, backed by top-tier life science investors with an informed perspective on where AI can have a profound impact on the industry.

What You'll Do

Engineering Leadership & Team Building

• Build, manage, and grow the engineering team. Hiring, mentoring, and setting a high bar for craft as the team scales.
• Establish engineering processes (planning, code review, on-call, incident response) that fit a fast-moving startup without slowing it down.
• Act as a career and technical mentor for engineers on the team and create clear paths for growth.
• Represent engineering in company-wide planning alongside the Head of AI and Head of Product, translating business priorities into a coherent technical roadmap.

Technical Direction & Architecture

• Own the architecture of the core web platform that enables deal teams to explore, upload, and analyze drug assets from discovery through due diligence and valuation.
• Set direction on front-end architecture and backend/orchestration services that coordinate our service end to end.
• Stay hands‑on where it matters most. Reviewing designs and code, unblocking hard technical problems, and occasionally shipping directly, especially in ambiguous or high‑stakes areas of the platform.
• Design and maintain clean, scalable APIs between the core LLM orchestration layer and the platform, working closely with the Head of AI's team to expose model outputs as trustworthy, user‑ready insights.

Reliability, Security & Scale

• Own the reliability, security, and scalability of our production systems on AWS (or equivalent), including uptime, latency, and secure handling of sensitive scientific and deal data.
• Champion engineering best practices across the team. Automated testing, CI/CD, observability, and modular architecture. Make the tradeoffs between speed and rigor explicit as we scale.
• Build the foundation for compliance and security practices appropriate to handling sensitive life sciences and deal data.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner with the Head of Product to turn scientific and business logic into actionable workflows, and with the Head of AI to ensure ML systems and the product platform evolve together.
• Work directly with customers and domain experts when needed to understand what "transformative outcome" looks like for a deal team, and translate that into engineering priorities.
• Report to the CTO on engineering roadmap, team health, and technical risk, and help shape overall technology strategy as a member of the leadership team.

Who You Are

Core Qualifications

• 8+ years of full‑stack software engineering experience, including experience building modern web applications end‑to‑end. AWS experience is a necessity.
• 3+ years leading or managing engineering teams, ideally at a startup or high‑growth environment, with a track record of hiring and developing engineers.
• Experience owning architecture for complex, data‑driven applications that integrate with APIs, asynchronous job systems, or machine learning backends.
• Strong command of frontend architecture, state management, and visualization frameworks (e.g., React Query, Redux, D3, Plotly) as well as backend/API engineering (RESTful or GraphQL APIs, authentication/authorization, event-driven workflows, background jobs).
• Familiarity with best practices for secure data handling, authentication, authorization (PBAC, RBAC) and compliance.
• Education: Bachelor's, Master's, or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.

Soft Skills

• A bias to action and delivery. Self‑starter attitude with a strong sense of ownership over outcomes, not just code.
• A leadership style that balances high standards with empathy. You build teams people want to stay on.
• Strong problem‑solving skills and an analytical mindset, with the judgment to know when to go deep technically versus when to delegate.
• Excellent communication skills. Able to explain technical tradeoffs clearly to the CTO, peers in Product and AI, and non‑technical stakeholders alike.
• A collaborative operator who builds trust across functions and wants to build things that truly matter.

Bonus

• Experience in healthcare, life sciences, or biopharma sectors is a plus, but not required. More important is a willingness to dive into the field and genuine curiosity about life sciences, the drug development process, and how dealmaking revolves around it.
• Prior experience as a founding or early engineering leader at a startup scaling from seed/Series A through growth stage.

What We Offer

• Impact: Your work directly enables breakthrough therapies to reach patients faster
• Ownership: Build and lead the platform as a foundational engineering leader
• Growth: Shape our product experience during a critical scaling phase
• Compensation: Competitive salary and equity
• Team: Collaborative, mission‑driven colleagues passionate about transforming biopharma

Location

For this management position, we're looking for candidates based in the Northeast (Boston or New York) who can support regular in‑person time with the CTO, Head of AI, Head of Product, and the engineering team. We are also open to this role being based in our San Francisco, CA office.

Compensation Range: $235K - $281K