Staff Engineer, Software (Deployment)

Pacific Biosciences; Menlo Park (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

PacBio is seeking a Staff Engineer, Software (Deployment) to design, develop, and deploy compute platforms for sequencing appliances, data centers, and the cloud. You will set long-term deployment architectures and deliver a product that satisfies regulated customers.

You will lead cloud and on-prem deployment, containerized builds, and image architecture with hardware integration. Collaboration with Quality, Regulatory, IT, and Manufacturing will ensure traceability and auditable releases.

Qualifications

• 10+ years with systems, platform, release, or deployment engineering or equivalent advanced degree.
• Experience delivering Linux-based systems into customer or field environments.
• Proficiency in Python and shell for production automation.
• Strong Linux expertise across boot, systemd, filesystems, packaging, and driver integration.
• Experience building automated, reproducible image build pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Cloud deployment of core data analysis pipelines to cloud and on-prem to offer flexible compute.
• Build and unify CI/CD pipelines and containerize builds for reproducibility and uptime.
• Own image architecture and hardware integration across node roles and variants.
• Define declarative configuration for instruments and laboratory systems.
• Partner with Quality and Regulatory to ensure auditable, compliant builds.

Skills

Python

Shell

Linux

CI/CD

Infrastructure as code

Cloud deployment

Education

Master's degree in computer science or related discipline

Tools

CI/CD platforms

Containerization

Image build pipelines

Job description

Staff Engineer, Software (Deployment)

PacBio (NASDAQ: PACB) is a premier life science technology company that designs, develops, and manufactures advanced sequencing solutions to help scientists and clinical researchers resolve genetically complex problems. Our mission is to enable the promise of genomics to better human health. Genomics is core to all biological processes, and our advanced genomics tools provide scientists and clinical researchers the insights to better understand biology and health. We are now entering the century of biology and genomics is at the heart of the next revolution. Become part of the new paradigm in gene sequencing and help shape the future of genomic study by joining the PacBio team.

Position Summary

PacBio's sequencing instruments are critical to sequencing labs around the world. As a Staff Deployment Engineer, you will work cross-functionally to design, develop, and deploy the compute platforms integrated into our sequencing appliances, our customers' data centers, and the cloud. You will be expected to set technical direction rather than receive it: to decide what our deployment and platform architectures should look like several years out, build the pieces that do not exist yet, and deliver a product that satisfies CLIA labs and other regulated customers.

Responsibilities

• Cloud deployment. Bring core data analysis pipelines to the cloud to offer flexible, on-demand compute capacity for our customers. Provide a secure, reliable, and transparent alternative to on-prem compute. Define and implement the deployment model for cloud-hosted services, including infrastructure as code, environment promotion, secrets management, and delivery pipelines, and establish the patterns other teams will adopt.
• Build and release pipelines. Consolidate build infrastructure onto a single CI/CD platform, moving builds into containers so they are reproducible and independent of hand-maintained agents. Rationalize dependency management, proselytize statelessness and immutability, and instrument deployment pipelines for predictability and uptime. Develop and implement traceability and retention policies for product lifecycle management.
• Image architecture and hardware integration. Own image architecture jointly with instrument engineering: composition, maintainability, and performance across node roles and hardware variants. You will build the images themselves with curated package sets, PacBio software, purposeful partition layouts, and the driver, device, and firmware integration each variant requires. This includes virtual machines in production and virtualized server equivalents used for development and test. Support custom hardware interfaces, robotics packages, and low-latency user interfaces.
• Infrastructure and Configuration as code. Replace bespoke scripting and image-baked state with declarative, reviewable configuration for instruments, build infrastructure, and laboratory systems.
• Supply-chain integrity and security posture. Establish the assurance capability the product needs: artifact and image signing, verified boot, automated software bill of materials generation, continuous vulnerability ingestion and triage against a defined patch cadence, and a documented hardening baseline.
• Cross-functional and regulatory execution. Partner with Quality, Regulatory, Manufacturing, IT, and Field Service to make deployment auditable and predictable: traceability from commit to shipped artifact, change control and release documentation, and validated builds delivered to manufacturing on schedule.
• Technical leadership and resilience. Set engineering standards, review designs and code, and mentor engineers across the organization. Document and de-risk the systems that currently rely on individual knowledge.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional experience in systems, platform, release, or deployment engineering, or a Master's degree in computer science, computer engineering, or a related discipline plus 8+ years of such experience.
• Demonstrated experience delivering Linux-based systems on appliance, instrument, or other purpose-built hardware into customer or field environments.
• Fluency in Python and shell, sufficient to build and maintain production automation that others depend on.
• Deep, hands‑on Linux systems expertise: boot chain, systemd, filesystems and partitioning, packaging, and kernel or driver integration.
• Experience designing and operating automated, reproducible image build pipelines, with a clear point of view on what makes a build trustworthy.
• Experience delivering software under formal change control in a regulated or otherwise high‑consequence setting, where releases must be auditable and any prior version reproducible on demand.
• Strong hands‑on ownership of CI/CD systems at scale, including pipeline-as-code, containerized builds, build agent fleet management, and infrastructure as code.
• Production experience deploying cloud services for customer use with at least