Lila Sciences · 20 hours ago
Principal Software Engineer, Full Stack
San Francisco, CA USA
Full-time
Onsite
Lead/Staff
$204K/yr - $272K/yr
8+ years expLila Sciences is pioneering a new age of boundless discovery by building the world's first scientific superintelligence platform. They are seeking a Principal Full-stack Engineer to design, build, and optimize backend systems for AI-driven scientific applications, collaborating with ML researchers and scientists to create scalable solutions.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)SoftwareLife ScienceFoundational AI
Responsibilities
Design & Build UI and APIs: Design and build high-performance, secure, and well-documented UI and APIs that integrate with AI-driven applications
Database Architecture & Scaling: Develop schemas and manage diverse data systems (SQL, NoSQL, Vector DBs, and others) for optimal performance and scalability
Application Development: Drive the implementation of front-end and backend services, focusing on performance, maintainability, and reliability
Performance & Reliability: Diagnose and optimize system bottlenecks, ensuring high availability and low-latency performance across large-scale workloads
Cloud & Infrastructure: Leverage AWS services, Kubernetes and modern DevOps practices to build and deploy production-grade systems at scale
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work with ML researchers, engineers, and scientists to integrate data pipelines, APIs, and cloud infrastructure into scientific workflows
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field
8-15 years of engineering experience building and deploying large-scale systems in production. You must be strong in either front-end or backend
Strong experience with React and Typescript is required
Strong experience with SQL, NoSQL, and emerging database technologies (e.g., Vector DBs); proven track record in schema design, indexing, and query optimization
Proven ability to design and scale RESTful or GraphQL APIs with a focus on reliability and performance
Hands on experience using AI coding assistants to drive productivity is required
Acute listening skills, and a proven track record of working cross-functionally with scientists, data engineers, and product teams; able to explain complex ideas to diverse audiences
Proven ability to take ownership of complex backend challenges, balancing trade-offs between scalability, performance, and maintainability
Preferred
Hands-on experience with AWS, GCP, or Azure; strong understanding of Kubernetes and containerization, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation), and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions)
Experience working with life sciences, material sciences, or other research-heavy fields
Experience with orchestration tools (Flyte, Temporal, Airflow, Prefect, etc.)
Benefits
Bonus potential
Generous early equity
Company
Lila Sciences
Lila Sciences creates a scientific superintelligence platform and autonomous labs for life sciences, chemistry, and materials science. It is a sub-organization of Flagship Pioneering.
201-500 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Lila Sciences has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (8)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$550.67MKey Investors
ARIANVenturesBraidwell,Collective Global Management
2026-01-20Grant· $0.67M
2025-10-14Series A· $115M
2025-09-14Series A· $235M
Recent News
MIT Technology Review
2026-01-22
2026-01-03
2025-12-17
Company data provided by crunchbase