---
title: 'Member of Technical Staff - Software Engineer at Valthos'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-software-engineer-valthos-new-york-zm8g3pacag4t'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Member of Technical Staff - Software Engineer at Valthos

- **Company:** Valthos
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2025-10-25
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/valthos/58637d53-f949-49fa-b318-88a93635337b

## Job description

Software Engineer Valthos Inc.

Valthos is an applied biological intelligence company. We build and deploy software and biological AI systems to safeguard humanity. The same AI architectures that enable self-driving cars, land rockets with precision, and deliver expert-level reasoning are beginning to be deployed in biological design. To stay ahead, we must advance our arsenal of tools to capture and design against real-time sensitivities in nature’s evolving mutational landscape. We are a group of mission-driven software engineers from Palantir and applied biological ML engineers from MIT’s Broad Institute and DeepMind making the latest advances in computational biology accessible in the real-world for federal and commercial use.

We are seeking software engineers to design and implement a platform that will allow Valthos to bring frontier methods to the end users, scientific and technical. Your day-to-day experience will range from implementing complex distributed systems, managing container-based scalable infrastructure, building REST APIs, integrating open source solutions, understanding the needs of our users and adapting our software to suit. You'll collaborate closely with technical and non-technical counterparts to understand our developers' and customers' problems and build software and infrastructure to tackle them.

## The Role

- Work with the AI Engineers and Computational Biologists to design and build high-scale, opinionated APIs that are data/GPU intensive
- Prototype and develop interactive workflow UIs for life-science users
- Iterate on and create data visualization tools that provide users with model results and context to understand them
- Work with users to develop SDK for technical users
- Develop and maintain a secure cloud environment for Valthos data and results.
- Build distributed systems that efficiently/predictably process large-scale user data using both CPUs and GPUs
- Build and maintain the backend infrastructure required for scaling out storage and compute
- Design and build Valthos storage and search systems. Expect rapidly increasing scale and latency requirements.
- Develop and maintain the systems and services that underpin the productivity of our development teams. Everything from our internal dev environments to managing automated deployments to our production infrastructure.

## Qualifications (required)

- Experience implementing or working on distributed systems and their associated technologies (Kubernetes, Docker, etc)
- Working knowledge of the full application stack (Web UX frameworks, API design and development, data modeling, RDBs, etc).
- Preference for working in a fast-paced, autonomous environment

## Qualifications (preferred)

- Experience working with AWS or other IaaS providers.
- Experience working with large scale data and it’s associated technologies (parquet, pandas, etc)
- Experience building data pipelines and asynchronous data processing
- Experience working with biological data (sequences) and bioinformatics tools
- Contributions to open-source projects

If there is a fit, we’ll schedule two technical interviews. The final step is an onsite in our office, where you’ll work on a small project, discuss ideas, and work with the wider team.

## About Valthos

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Valthos builds frontier AI systems that identify biological threats and design medical countermeasures in real time, strengthening biodefense for government and life sciences stakeholders.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage – $30M raised)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Kathleen McMahon (Co-Founder & CEO) and Tess van Stekelenburg (Co-Founder & President)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Biodefense, Artificial Intelligence, Biotechnology
- **Target customers**: Government agencies (biodefense, national security) and life sciences organizations (pharma, biotech, public health)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To build next-generation biodefense by developing AI systems that can rapidly characterize biological sequences and design adaptive medical countermeasures, ensuring threats are neutralized as fast as they emerge.

## Products & Services
- **Frontier AI Biodefense Platform**: A software infrastructure that harnesses computational methods to characterize biological sequences and compress the time to design medical countermeasures. The platform is designed for experts in government and life sciences to detect and mitigate biological threats with speed and precision. Type: AI/Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for defense and biosecurity.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (Private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – $30 million (Seed round, announced October 29, 2025)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: OpenAI Startup Fund, Lux Capital, Founders Fund. Additional support from investors including OpenAI, Lux Capital, Founders Fund, and more.
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Raised $30M seed financing from top-tier investors (OpenAI, Lux, Founders Fund) signaling strong institutional confidence.
  - Founding team drawn from Palantir, DeepMind, Broad Institute, and Arc Institute.
  - Actively hiring across 12+ open positions (Applied AI, Software Engineering, Computational Biology, Operations) as of mid-2025.
  - LinkedIn follower growth of +10.7% monthly, indicating increasing brand awareness.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Unique positioning at the intersection of AI and biodefense**: Addresses a critical, high-stakes niche that few startups target.
- **World-class founding team**: CEO Kathleen McMahon previously led Palantir’s Life Sciences division; President Tess van Stekelenburg is a partner at Lux Capital. Technical leads come from DeepMind, Broad Institute, and Arc Institute.
- **Backing from AI and defense leaders**: OpenAI, Lux Capital, and Founders Fund provide both capital and strategic credibility.
- **First-mover in adaptive countermeasure design**: The platform aims to update medical countermeasures in real time, solving the asymmetry problem where pathogens can be created faster than cures.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale software infrastructure** for government and commercial biodefense stakeholders.
- **Expand engineering and research teams** – currently hiring for applied AI, forward deployed engineers, computational biologists, and operations roles.
- **Deepen partnerships** with government agencies and life sciences organizations to deploy the platform against emerging biological threats.
- **Lay groundwork for adaptive, precision therapeutics** beyond immediate biodefense applications.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven work**: Directly contribute to protecting humanity from biological threats – a high-impact, urgent problem.
- **Elite team environment**: Work alongside engineers and scientists from Palantir, DeepMind, Broad Institute, and Arc Institute.
- **Strong backing and resources**: $30M seed funding from top-tier investors provides runway and stability.
- **In-office culture**: Valthos operates from a physical office in New York, NY, with an in-office expectation (as per Built In profile).
- **Growth opportunities**: Early-stage company with 8–10 employees and 12+ open roles – new hires will shape the company’s technical and operational direction.
- **Notable perks**: Not explicitly listed, but typical early-stage startup benefits (equity, competitive comp) likely apply. Emphasis on engineering and biotech talent.

## Sources
1. [valthos.com](https://valthos.com/)
2. [valthos.com/blog/intro](https://valthos.com/blog/intro)
3. [LinkedIn – Valthos](https://www.linkedin.com/company/valthos)
4. [PRNewswire – Valthos Raises $30M](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/valthos-raises-30m-from-openai-lux-capital-founders-fund-to-build-next-generation-biodefense-302598583.html)
5. [Built In – Valthos Careers](https://builtin.com/company/valthos)

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