Software Engineer, Full Stack (Enterprise Lifecycle) (High Seniority)

Benchling, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 225,378 - 304,924; Full time

Job summary

Benchling is seeking a skilled Software Engineer to join our new Enterprise Lifecycle team in San Francisco. This role requires 8+ years of experience in software engineering, focusing on backend systems and technical leadership. You will design innovative systems for regulatory compliance and audits. The position involves leading projects, mentoring engineers, and working closely with cross-functional teams. We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement, prioritizing in-office collaboration three days a week. Salary ranges from $225,378 to $304,924.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience as a software engineer, with a focus on backend systems.
• Experience leading significant projects and mentoring engineers.
• Strong understanding of both backend and frontend development.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop innovative products for regulatory submissions.
• Lead architectural design and implementation for backend systems.
• Provide mentorship and technical leadership to peers.

Skills

Backend systems

APIs

Cloud-based applications

Frontend development

Software architecture

Technical leadership

Communication skills

Job description

We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era.

When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. That only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done.

Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma.

We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it's core to how we work, and we're committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day‑to‑day. As part of our interview process, you'll complete a brief AI‑focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today.

Role Overview

The Enterprise Lifecycle team is a newly formed engineering team dedicated to ensuring Benchling's largest customers—internationally recognizable names developing some of the world's most innovative treatments and cures—are successful in regulated environments. Our mission is to help them prove their products are safe for human consumption and navigate complex regulatory processes with confidence and efficiency.

As a Software Engineer on this team, you will be a technical leader responsible for designing and building the critical systems that enterprise customers depend on for regulatory submissions and audits. You will own horizontally impactful systems while directly enabling features that appear in FDA submissions and GxP‑regulated workflows. This role sits at the intersection of platform and product work, requiring both deep technical expertise and strong product sense.

Our team values technical excellence, a deep understanding of user needs, and a commitment to building products that make complex scientific work easier and more efficient. If you're excited about solving challenging technical problems that have a meaningful impact on global health and innovation, we’d love to hear from you.

Responsibilities

• Drive the design and development of innovative products and systems that advance Benchling's product and business goals, serving as a technical expert within the team
• Independently architect and implement solutions to complex, open‑ended problems in areas such as comprehensive audit coverage, scalable export systems, document lifecycle management, and regulatory compliance workflows
• Lead large, sophisticated initiatives spanning multiple quarters, breaking down ambiguous requirements into concrete technical plans and iterative delivery milestones
• Design for scale and reliability with the future in mind, anticipating technical challenges across our growing enterprise customer base
• Write exceptionally well‑documented, well‑tested code that follows company best practices and serves as an example for others
• Provide technical leadership through code reviews, architectural guidance, and mentorship of engineers across experience levels
• Partner closely with product management, design, and cross‑functional stakeholders to translate customer needs into technical solutions
• Explore and evaluate opportunities to leverage AI and LLMs to improve compliance workflows, audit reporting, and regulatory navigation for our customers
• Establish and improve standards of code quality, style, and architecture at the team level
• Own end‑to‑end delivery of critical features, from planning and development through deployment, maintenance, and monitoring
• Collaborate with other teams to ensure our horizontal systems integrate seamlessly and enable product development across the organization

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience as a software engineer, with demonstrated progression of increasing scope and impact
• Experience as a technical lead on significant projects involving multiple engineers across multiple quarters
• Strong experience building backend systems and APIs for cloud‑based web applications
• Solid understanding of frontend development and the ability to build full‑stack solutions when needed
• Proven ability to design scalable, robust software architectures that align with business requirements and long‑term maintainability
• Track record of independently scoping and driving initiative‑level work with feature scope and impact across a whole product area or team
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to produce clear technical designs and articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and develop other engineers, enabling them to be more productive and successful
• Interest in learning about life sciences. Prior biotech knowledge not required, but enthusiasm to learn is essential

How We Work

We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in‑office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on‑site 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday).

#BI-Hybrid

Benchling welcomes everyone.

We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences.

We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Compensation Range: $225,378 - $304,924