Software Engineer, Applications

Responsibilities

• Serve as the senior technical authority for the Study Lifecycle and Process Execution teams, driving the design and development of systems that advance Benchling's product and business goals across studies, workflows, procedures, and bioprocess/bioanalytical workflows.
• Independently architect and implement solutions to complex, open-ended problems — from system architecture to backend models and APIs to rich frontend UI — for scientific workflows used in regulated (GLP/GMP) environments.
• Lead large, multi-quarter initiatives: break down ambiguous scientific and regulatory requirements into concrete technical plans and iterative delivery milestones.
• Use technical decision-making as a tool of engineering strategy — knowing when to leverage existing platform capabilities, when to take on technical debt deliberately, and when to preserve optionality for the long term.
• Act as a force multiplier across the Applications division: help set engineering direction, raise standards for quality and architecture, and influence technical choices beyond your immediate teams.
• Provide technical leadership through code review, architectural guidance, and mentorship of engineers across all experience levels.
• Partner closely with product management, design, and cross-functional stakeholders to translate customer and scientific needs into technical solutions.
• Explore and evaluate opportunities to leverage AI and LLMs to make lab operations, SOP execution, and time-series analysis faster and more reliable for scientists.
• Own end-to-end delivery of critical features — from planning and development through deployment, maintenance, and monitoring.
• Help build and scale the team by improving our tooling, engineering processes, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a 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, plus the ability to build full-stack when needed. Our stack is a comprehensive React frontend and a Python backend on a predominantly relational data model in Postgres; direct experience is appreciated but not required if you can pick it up quickly.
• Proven ability to design scalable, robust architectures that align with business requirements and long-term maintainability.
• Track record of independently scoping and driving initiative-level work whose impact spans multiple teams and shapes an entire product area or division.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills — able to produce clear technical designs and use influence rooted in technical expertise to align other engineers on an implementation strategy.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and develop other engineers, raising the team's bar in areas such as testing, performance, and maintainability.
• Interest in learning about life sciences. Prior biotech knowledge is appreciated but not required; enthusiasm to learn is essential. (Experience with regulated, GLP/GMP, or laboratory/manufacturing software is a plus.)