---
title: 'Senior Data Engineer (5+ years) at Foresite Labs'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-engineer-5-years-foresite-labs-san-francisco-73hkbgkj8gd6'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Senior Data Engineer (5+ years) at Foresite Labs

- **Company:** Foresite Labs
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Posted:** 2026-05-12
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/foresitelabs/jobs/8544870002

## Job description

Foresite Labs is a translational R&D team that derives insights from precision measurement and population-scale biology and genetics to address unmet clinical needs. We use human genetics to systematically dissect and understand human disease biology and develop and critically evaluate therapeutic hypotheses. We engage in translational research, transforming basic insights into therapeutic opportunities. Our work supports drug discovery and company formation, and provides the core around which new ideas are realized and incubated. We offer competitive salaries, excellent benefits, a flexible work environment, and the opportunity to learn from top thinkers in various disciplines. Foresite Labs is headquartered in San Francisco and Boston.

## What You’ll Do

- Build and own production data infrastructure. Design, implement, and operate deterministic data pipelines that feed  intelligence layers; ingest clinical, financial, scientific, and commercial data from REST APIs, XML feeds, and file-based sources into clean, queryable analytical layers; own the full lifecycle: pagination, rate limiting, auth, schema drift, idempotency, retries, monitoring, and alerting.
- Model and curate high-quality data assets. Perform entity resolution, schema design, and quality enforcement across disparate and heterogeneous data sources; ensure downstream models, agents and dashboards operate on clean and trustworthy data.
- Support AI-native workflows. Build vector infrastructure (e.g., embeddings, indexing, retrieval) and structured data interfaces that GenAI agents and LLM orchestrators depend on; ensure AI layers have the right data in the right shape at the right time.
- Uphold high engineering standards and collaborate broadly. Lead code and design reviews, establish testing and observability best practices, and mentor peers; partner with ML engineers, computational biologists, and company founders to translate scientific and business goals into maintainable, and scalable technical solutions.
- Leverage agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Codex, or similar) to accelerate prototyping, refactoring, and debugging.

## What You’ll Bring

- 5+ years of professional data engineering experience designing, building, and operating production pipelines end-to-end - including schema design for analytical workloads, entity resolution across messy real-world sources, and data quality enforcement at the pipeline level.
- Deep fluency in Python and SQL, writing performant, well-tested data transformation code (dbt or similar), with production experience in pipeline orchestration (e.g., Airflow, Prefect) covering DAG design, scheduling, dependency management, retry/backfill patterns, and alerting.
- Hands-on cloud data stack experience across AWS or GCP (e.g., managed Postgres, object storage, query engines, serverless ETL) and working knowledge of IAM, networking, and infrastructure patterns; comfortable with Spark or Trino at scale over Parquet/Iceberg. Terraform, CDK, or Pulumi experience is a plus.
- Exposure to vector databases (Pinecone, pgvector, Weaviate, or similar) with an understanding of how embedding-based retrieval fits into LLM-powered applications.
- Comfortable building and navigating Unix environments, containers (Docker), and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or similar).
- Mindset for rapid and early‑stage execution: bias for action, ownership of ambiguous problem spaces, and demonstrated ability to prioritize and wear multiple hats.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills - comfortable explaining complex ideas clearly to technical and non‑technical partners.

## Nice to Have

- Familiarity with biomedical or life sciences data (e.g., clinical trials, genomics, drug discovery, pharma commercial data).
- Familiarity with LLM application patterns: prompting, context engineering, tool use, structured outputs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
- Experience with dashboard/BI tooling (Streamlit, Retool, Metabase, or similar).

## Why Foresite Labs

- Impact. Your code will accelerate discovery and bring novel therapeutics closer to patients and will help AI driven scientific innovation.
- Autonomy. Small, senior teams give you room to architect and own end‑to‑end solutions without heavy bureaucracy.
- Learning. Work at the intersection of software, cloud infrastructure, and biology alongside experts in each domain.
- Flexibility & Benefits. Competitive salary and equity, comprehensive healthcare, generous PTO, and hybrid/remote options aligned to our SF or Boston hubs.
- Ready to build? Apply today and help us create the software foundation that powers the next generation of companies advancing biotech and scientific innovation.

Location: San Francisco, CA

Salary range: $185,000 - $221,400

Foresite Labs is an equal opportunity employer. We thrive on diversity and collaboration.

## About Foresite Labs

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Foresite Labs is an incubation platform that builds and launches transformational companies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, data science, and the life sciences.
- **Entity Type**: Private (incubation platform funded by Foresite Capital; latest fund $900M raised in 2024)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA (with a second office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA)
- **Founded**: 2019
- **Founders**: Vik Bajaj (CEO) is the founding CEO; the company was established by Foresite Capital

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Biotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, Drug Discovery, Healthcare Technology
- **Target customers**: Entrepreneurs and scientists building AI-driven life science companies; portfolio companies span B2B (drug development platforms, data analytics) and B2C (therapeutics)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Delivering on the promise of artificial intelligence in science and engineering” – accelerating scientific discovery by integrating AI, data science, and advanced analytics.

## Products & Services
Foresite Labs does not sell a single product; it operates as an incubation and company-building platform. Its core offerings include:

- **Incubation Platform**: Provides infrastructure, capital, scientific expertise, and operational support to spin out new companies. Portfolio includes Xaira Therapeutics, Prometheus, Alumis, Candid Therapeutics, and others.
- **Data Ecosystem**: Standardizes and harmonizes data generation and analysis across the portfolio to fuel AI breakthroughs.
- **Capabilities**: AI/ML model development, data science, advanced analytics, clinical development, and company formation.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed for Foresite Labs itself. Its portfolio company Prometheus was valued at $41B (2026).
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised by Foresite Capital (the affiliated investment firm) – $900M sixth fund (2024) and $173M dedicated to Foresite Labs incubated companies (2022).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Foresite Capital (lead investor); portfolio includes collaborations with UCB (acquisition of Candid Therapeutics), Jeff Bezos (Prometheus), and others.
- **Growth Signals**: 15 active job postings (up 650% year-over-year); portfolio company Alumis hit positive psoriasis trial results; Xaira Therapeutics released largest Perturb-Seq dataset; headcount of 31 employees with recent hiring surge.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Scientific rigor meets AI**: Combines deep life science expertise (scientists, clinicians) with cutting-edge AI/ML capabilities.
- **Captive capital and ecosystem**: Backed by Foresite Capital’s large funds, providing patient capital and a network of portfolio companies that share data and tools.
- **Data moat**: Proprietary data ecosystem that standardizes and harmonizes multi-omics and clinical data, creating a unique training ground for AI models.
- **Track record**: Successful exits (Candid Therapeutics acquired by UCB) and high-value spinouts (Prometheus at $41B).

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Scaling the incubation pipeline, expanding into new therapeutic areas (autoimmune diseases, oncology), and deepening AI capabilities (e.g., virtual cell models).
- **Direction for growth**: Building a self-reinforcing loop where portfolio companies generate data that feeds back into the platform, accelerating future discoveries.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture highlights**: Values include “Truth over progression” (data-driven decisions), “Take good risks” (celebrate informed risk-taking), and “Single accountable person” (clear ownership). Emphasis on collaboration and respect.
- **Remote/hybrid/office policy**: Flexible work environment; headquarters in San Francisco and Boston.
- **Notable perks**: Competitive salaries, excellent benefits, opportunity to learn from top thinkers across multiple disciplines (scientists, engineers, operators). Employees are encouraged to grow even if they eventually move to a portfolio company.
- **Engineering culture**: Hands-on work building AI platforms for drug discovery; roles span bioinformatics, data engineering, machine learning, and automation.
- **Reviews**: 4.2/5 on LinkedIn (8 reviews); compensation rated 4.3, culture 3.8, career 4.1.

## Sources
1. [foresitelabs.com](https://foresitelabs.com/) – Homepage, company description, portfolio
2. [foresitelabs.com/about](https://foresitelabs.com/about/) – Mission, team, founding story
3. [foresitelabs.com/careers](https://foresitelabs.com/careers/) – Careers page, values, benefits
4. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/foresitelabs](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/foresitelabs) – Current job openings
5. [linkedin.com/company/foresitelabs](https://www.linkedin.com/company/foresitelabs) – LinkedIn profile, employee count, growth, reviews, recent departures
6. [BioSpace](https://www.biospace.com/) – News on Foresite Capital’s $900M fund and $173M fund for incubated companies (referenced in LinkedIn feed)
7. [MobiHealthNews](https://www.mobihealthnews.com/) – Q&A on Project Stargate and AI cancer vaccines (referenced in LinkedIn feed)

## Other roles at Foresite Labs

- [(StealthCo) Scientist: Biology and Cell Pharmacology](https://feeny.ai/job/stealthco-scientist-biology-and-cell-pharmacology-foresite-labs-boston-vmgm4eyp0rp6) — Boston, MA
- [Software Engineer, AI Agents](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-ai-agents-foresite-labs-san-francisco-fa106kh70933) — San Francisco, CA