Staff Software Engineer

Staff / Lead Full-Stack Engineer

We're looking for a Staff / Lead Full-Stack Engineer to help build PathGen, a platform applying AI and data engineering to pathogen genomics and public health.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You'll work across frontend, backend and platform architecture while helping a small engineering team make good technical decisions and deliver reliable products.

What you'll do

• Own the technical design and delivery of significant product areas end-to-end.
• Turn ambiguous product and scientific requirements into pragmatic technical plans.
• Build across the stack, from user-facing applications to APIs, data workflows and backend services.
• Make architecture decisions and clearly articulate their trade-offs.
• Lead engineers through complex projects, removing blockers and creating clarity around priorities and implementation.
• Raise the engineering bar through design reviews, code review, testing and good engineering practices.
• Work closely with product, design, data science and scientific stakeholders.
• Identify technical risks, performance problems and technical debt before they become blockers.
• Remain hands-on and contribute directly to the codebase.

What we're looking for

• Strong experience building and shipping production web applications.
• Strong full-stack engineering skills, with depth in either frontend or backend and the ability to work effectively across both.
• Experience designing APIs, backend services and data-intensive or asynchronous systems.
• Evidence of owning complex technical projects from problem definition through production.
• Strong software architecture and system design fundamentals.
• Ability to reason clearly about scalability, reliability, security, performance and maintainability.
• Ability to work effectively when requirements are incomplete or changing.
• Experience mentoring or technically leading other engineers.
• Clear communication with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Useful experience

Experience with any of the following is useful but not required:

• Python and modern TypeScript web development.
• Cloud infrastructure and distributed systems.
• Data-intensive or scientific applications.
• AI/ML-enabled products.
• Genomics, bioinformatics or public health.
• Geospatial tools or products

What we offer

• Competitive salary
• Hybrid work (2 days / week in our office at SGH)
• Direct real-world public health impact.
• Significant ownership and influence over architecture, engineering standards, and technical direction.
• A small, experienced team with minimal bureaucracy and a high degree of autonomy.
• Interesting problems spanning software engineering, AI, data, genomics, and geospatial systems.
• A role where you can remain hands-on while having substantial technical leadership impact.

Domain expertise in biology or genomics is not required. We care more about strong engineering judgment, technical leadership and the ability to learn unfamiliar domains quickly.