Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead

Merge Labs; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Merge Labs is seeking a senior software engineer to design, implement, debug and ship critical software across the stack. You will own end-to-end software from first principles to deployment, collaborating with scientists and engineers to unlock reliable experiments and results.

The role offers opportunities to influence architecture, improve reliability, and lead through technical excellence in a small team reporting directly to leadership.

Qualifications

• Proven track record delivering substantial software systems.
• Strong coding and debugging skills across stack.
• Experience making architecture decisions across components.
• Ability to mentor peers and communicate tradeoffs.
• Interest in hands-on work in a small team.

Responsibilities

• Own software from problem definition through implementation, deployment and operation.
• Turn ambiguous experimental needs into achievable software milestones with clear criteria.
• Build interfaces between applications, instrument SDKs, data systems and infrastructure.
• Pair with SDK and application engineers on integration, performance and recovery problems.
• Make pragmatic decisions about reuse, languages, architecture and build-vs-buy tradeoffs.
• Establish testing, observability and release practices to improve reliability and velocity.
• Build workflows for recording high-volume experimental data and manage its storage and metadata.
• Review code, mentor peers and communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to scientists and engineers.
• Work with the team’s manager to prioritize work and maintain commitments.

Skills

Software design

Debugging

System architecture

Mentoring

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Python

C++

Rust

Matlab

Data pipelines

High-throughput systems

Job description

Merge Labs is a frontier research lab with the mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, agency and experience. We’re pursuing this goal by developingfundamentally new approaches to brain-computer interfaces that interact with the brain at high bandwidth, integrate with advanced AI, and are ultimately safe and accessible for anyone to use.

About Us

Merge Labs is a frontier research lab with the mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, freedom and experience. We are pursuing this long-term goal by developing broadband brain-computer interfaces that interact with the brain at high bandwidth, integrate with advanced AI, and are ultimately safe and accessible enough for anyone to use.

About the Team

Our software engineers build the tools and systems that let scientists and engineers turn experimental ideas into reliable measurements and useful results. We work across custom instruments, applications, scientific data and computing infrastructure. We build close to our users, test ideas quickly and make the software dependable as experiments become repeatable workflows.

About the Role

We are looking for a senior, hands‑on software engineer with broad technical experience and the judgment to help a small team solve difficult problems. You will personally design, implement, debug and ship critical software, while helping colleagues make good architecture and delivery decisions.

You will work across the stack as the problem demands: an experiment application, an SDK integration, a data interface, a performance issue or the tooling that helps everyone ship. Experience in scientific software, hardware, or instrumentation is especially useful, and we welcome strong engineers from other backgrounds who can learn quickly and work closely with domain experts.

The role is an individual contributor position. There may be an opportunity to take on broader software leadership, including people management, over time. The immediate opportunity is to build consequential software and lead through technical work. This role will report directly to leadership.

In this role, you will:

• Personally own important software from initial problem definition through implementation, deployment and continued operation.

• Turn ambiguous experimental needs into achievable software milestones with clear acceptance criteria.

• Build and improve interfaces between applications, instrument SDKs, data systems and supporting infrastructure.

• Pair with SDK and application engineers on difficult integration, concurrency, performance and recovery problems.

• Make pragmatic decisions about reuse, languages, architecture and build‑versus‑buy tradeoffs.

• Establish focused testing, observability and release practices that improve reliability and research velocity.

• Build reliable workflows for recording high‑volume experimental data to disk, managing its storage and metadata, and moving it through analysis.

• Review code, mentor peers and communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to scientists and engineers.

• Work with the team’s manager to prioritize work and keep commitments consistent with capacity.

You might thrive in this role if you have:

• A record of personally delivering substantial software systems and supporting them after release.

• Strong coding and debugging skills, sound software fundamentals and comfort learning unfamiliar parts of a stack.

• Experience making architecture decisions across multiple components, with an ability to explain what you simplified and why.

• Good judgment about reliability, data integrity, performance and operational failure modes.

• Evidence of helping other engineers deliver through thoughtful review, mentoring and collaboration.

• An appetite for hands‑on work in a small team where priorities evolve with new experimental evidence.

Helpful, but not required:

• Scientific software, robotics, instrumentation, imaging, lab automation or other software connected to physical systems.

• Python, C++, Rust, Matlab, scientific data pipelines, high‑throughput systems or desktop applications.

• Previous people management or interest in growing into it.

For more information about hiring at Merge, please visit our Hiring FAQ

Merge Labs does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, family status, ancestry, citizenship, U.S. military (state and federal) and veteran status, or any other legally protected status. It is our intention that all applicants be given equal opportunity and that selection decisions are based on job related factors. We are an equal opportunity employer.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing [e-mail].