---
title: 'Founding Engineer at Valius Sciences'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-engineer-valius-sciences-san-francisco-kved6v4qf1fg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-04'
---

# Founding Engineer at Valius Sciences

- **Company:** Valius Sciences
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $200k–$300k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-11-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-04
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/valiussciences/4d43e82d-61da-445c-a4b7-7d98738086d9

## Job description

Valius overview At Valius, we believe that the future of cancer care will be defined by “maximalist” diagnostics: deep, comprehensive assessments of DNA, RNA, and protein designed to give patients and their care teams the best possible understanding of how their tumor works and what its vulnerabilities are.

We’re building the diagnostics and bioinformatics company to power this future, starting by applying this approach to patients with challenging cancers. In our first year, we worked with over 75 of these patients and, in many cases, identified plausible therapeutic targets which had not been discovered previously. This coming year, we’re on track to scale our patient volume significantly, all while bringing new diagnostic modalities (e.g., single-cell transcriptomics) and analytical approaches into clinical care for the very first time.

We’ve just raised a $13.5M seed round, led by 8VC and Basis Set Ventures, and are looking for people passionate about changing cancer care to join our growing team.

Founding engineer role We’re hiring a Founding Engineer to build the technical foundation of Valius. You’ll work directly with the founders and our science team to define and build the infrastructure and products that bring our molecular insights to life. The role spans the full stack. On the front end, you’ll build AI-powered interfaces that help patients, care teams, and Valius scientists explore complex molecular data. On the back end, you’ll own the architecture and tooling that power our internal and external applications, and you’ll partner with our computational biologists to build and manage the data pipelines that process patient molecular data.

As one of our first engineers, you’ll make foundational decisions about how we build, from system design to engineering practices. As we grow, you’ll have an opportunity to step into leadership or supervising roles.

This role will be expected to work out of our beautiful San Francisco office four days a week.

## What you'll do

- Shape technical direction and roadmap: Partner with the founding team and science team to set the technical vision and roadmap for our internal and external applications.
- Own architecture, infrastructure, and pipelines: Make key decisions on system design, cloud infrastructure, data pipelines, and our security and compliance posture, then implement them end to end. This includes building and maintaining the systems that reliably ingest, process, and manage patient molecular data.
- Build intuitive front-end applications: Design and develop AI-powered interfaces that make complex molecular data accessible and actionable for patients, clinicians, and scientists.
- Partner with computational biologists: Work closely with our science team to build tools that speed up their work.
- Uphold engineering rigor: Write clean, well-tested code and set a high standard for reliability and maintainability across the codebase.
- Contribute across the company: Pitch in on cross-functional initiatives and bring an engineering perspective to company-level decisions.

## What you’ll bring

- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Strong full-stack foundation, with particular depth in back-end systems, data infrastructure, and cloud architecture (Python, FastAPI, AWS/GCP, data pipelines), plus front-end experience (React, TypeScript, Tailwind)
- Experience making architectural decisions
- Track record of taking ownership and shipping features end to end
- Strong product instincts and the ability to work with non-engineering stakeholders to shape roadmaps
- Strong communication skills
- Excitement about working in a fast-moving, early-stage environment where the scope of the role will evolve
- Experience in or exposure to life sciences, genomics, bioinformatics, or a related field
- Commitment to our patient-focused mission

Other nice to haves

- Experience as an early engineer or founding engineer at a startup
- Experience mentoring engineers or acting as a tech lead
- Background in data engineering or working with large datasets
- Experience integrating AI features in production applications
- Interest in growing into an engineering leadership role as the company scales

## What we’ll bring

- Competitive salary and meaningful founding-level equity
- Generous refresh grants
- Comprehensive benefits (health, dental, vision, 401(k))
- Real investment in your professional development
- Fun, mission-driven team culture

## About Valius Sciences

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Valius Sciences provides maximalist molecular diagnostic testing for cancer patients, mapping tumors across DNA, RNA, and protein layers to identify actionable therapeutic targets.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed/Series A – conflicting reports)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, United States
- **Founded**: 2025
- **Founders**: Edward Larkin, Claire Oldfield (COO), Sarah Hesse (Head of Translational Science)

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Cancer diagnostics, precision oncology, molecular testing
- Target customers: B2C (cancer patients, especially those with rare, aggressive, or treatment-resistant cancers) and B2B (oncologists and care teams)
- Mission or purpose statement: To give every cancer patient — particularly those facing rare, aggressive, or treatment-resistant disease — access to the most comprehensive molecular understanding of their tumor and available treatments.

## Products & Services
- **Valius Maximalist Diagnostics Platform**: A comprehensive testing battery that includes whole genome sequencing, whole transcriptome (RNA) sequencing, single-cell RNA sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, high-plex protein staining (IHC), and ultra-sensitive ctDNA monitoring. The service identifies mutations, copy number changes, gene expression, pathway activation, tumor heterogeneity, immune microenvironment, resistance mechanisms, and actionable surface targets. Results are delivered with ongoing scientific partnership and an AI-powered, queryable data platform.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding — conflicting reports: $10M (Seed, per DefineVC and Tracxn) or $13.5M (per company blog). [definevc.com](https://www.definevc.com/insights/putting-the-patient-at-the-center-of-cancer-science-with-valius-sciences) / [valiussciences.com](https://www.valiussciences.com/) (blog post)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: 8VC, Basis Set Ventures (seed round)
- **Growth Signals**: Raised funding in early 2026; has worked with patients across 25+ cancer types; early cases identified new drug targets not found by prior diagnostics; hiring across key roles (Computational Biologist, Translational Scientist, Software Engineer, Operations Lead).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Maximalist, multi-omics approach**: Covers DNA, RNA, and protein comprehensively rather than limited panel testing; leaves no stone unturned.
- **Ongoing scientific partnership**: Unlike standard PDF-report diagnostics, Valius provides dedicated scientists who meet regularly with patients and physicians, and data remains accessible and queryable forever via AI.
- **Patient-centric model**: Direct-pay service (pricing $50k–$150k with discounts); focuses on biologically plausible targets regardless of cancer type; supports clinical trial matching, single-patient INDs, and recurrence monitoring.
- **Top-tier team**: Founders combine operational discipline, commercial rigor, and deep scientific credibility.

## Strategic Focus
- Scale the platform to reach more patients with rare, aggressive, or recurrent cancers.
- Continue refining the AI-powered data platform for real-time querying and analysis.
- Expand partnerships with oncologists and treatment centers to integrate Valius findings into care pathways.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven**: Direct, immediate impact on cancer patients’ treatment options.
- **Interdisciplinary culture**: Hires computational biologists, scientists, engineers, and clinicians who span disciplines and don’t fit neatly into boxes.
- **Cutting-edge tech**: Work with whole genome, single-cell, spatial, and proteomic data at scale.
- **Autonomy & ownership**: Small, focused team with front-line patient interaction.
- **Location**: San Francisco (likely office-first; remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated). “Outlier” culture emphasized.
- **Open roles**: Computational Biologist, Translational Scientist, Software Engineer, Operations Lead (as of 2026).

## Sources
1. [Valius Sciences Website](https://www.valiussciences.com/)
2. [Valius Sciences Careers Page](https://www.valiussciences.com/careers)
3. [DefineVC Investment Blog](https://www.definevc.com/insights/putting-the-patient-at-the-center-of-cancer-science-with-valius-sciences)
4. [Tracxn Company Profile](https://tracxn.com/d/companies/valius/__spxuU3YvDbNRZwJnIIruRczc89b40XA-xktgbWeCXkI)
5. [Ashby Careers Portal](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/valiussciences)

## Other roles at Valius Sciences

- [Head of Growth](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-growth-valius-sciences-san-francisco-bjkg3srbreb9) — San Francisco, CA
- [Director of Translational Science](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-translational-science-valius-sciences-san-francisco-svfhd275hh5n) — San Francisco, CA
- [Clinical Translational Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/clinical-translational-scientist-valius-sciences-san-francisco-rch03b5c4vrz) — San Francisco, CA
- [Computational Biologist](https://feeny.ai/job/computational-biologist-valius-sciences-san-francisco-9hh0dj4aa8eq) — San Francisco, CA
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