Senior Software Engineer, Scientific System of Record

Lila Sciences Lila Sciences · AI Frontier · Alewife, Cambridge, MA +1 · Software

Senior Software Engineer role focused on building the Scientific System of Record (SSR) team at Lila Sciences. This role involves developing systems that model scientific intent, experiment planning, and results capture, connecting scientific intent to physical reality and closing the Design-Build-Test-Learn loop. The engineer will build UIs, APIs, backend services, and data models (including vector databases), focusing on reliability, performance, and scale within a cloud environment (AWS, Kubernetes). Collaboration with scientists, ML engineers, and other teams is key. While the company is AI-focused and the role supports ML workflows and AI-driven applications, the core responsibility is building the foundational systems, not directly developing AI models.

What you'd actually do

  1. Build systems that model scientific intent, experiment planning, protocol execution, sample and asset state, operational events, and results capture across complex lab workflows.
  2. Design and implement high-quality, secure, and well-documented UIs and APIs that support scientists, automation systems, ML workflows, and AI-driven applications.
  3. Build front-end and backend services with a focus on performance, maintainability, and reliability.
  4. Develop domain models, schemas, indexes, and data contracts across SQL, NoSQL, vector databases, data lakehouses, and other scientific data systems.
  5. Diagnose bottlenecks, improve system performance, and contribute to observability, reliability, and operational excellence for production systems.

Skills

Required

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Python
  • Application and API Development
  • Databases and Data Modeling
  • Production Systems
  • Collaboration
  • Problem Solving

Nice to have

  • AWS
  • Kubernetes
  • Terraform
  • CloudFormation
  • GitHub Actions
  • Flyte
  • Temporal
  • Airflow
  • Prefect
  • laboratory products
  • scientific workflow products
  • LIMS products
  • ELN products
  • data platform products
  • ML platform products
  • auditability
  • traceability
  • reproducibility
  • data provenance
  • regulated workflows

What the JD emphasized

  • Senior Software Engineers with full stack experience
  • 4-6+ years of engineering experience
  • You must be strong in either front-end or backend.
  • Strong expertise in at least one of the following areas, with the ability to work across the stack: front-end engineering, backend engineering, or data modeling and system design.