--- title: 'Software Engineer, Applications (App Foundations) (High Seniority) at Benchling' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-applications-app-foundations-high-seniority-benchling-san-9x466r46s0ab' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-10' --- # Software Engineer, Applications (App Foundations) (High Seniority) at Benchling - **Company:** Benchling - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-07-22 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/benchling/6beeaebc-fd49-47d7-a179-dd674bab58b7 ## Job description We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era. When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done. Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma. We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it's core to how we work, and we're committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day-to-day. As part of our interview process, you'll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today. ## ROLE OVERVIEW The App Foundations group — comprised of our Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams — builds the surfaces and systems at the heart of the Benchling experience. On one side, that's how scientists capture their work every day — the Notebook and the structured data-input tables where experimental data becomes clean, structured, and analyzable. On the other, it's the enterprise lifecycle capabilities that make that data trustworthy at scale: audit trails, review and approval, exports, and backups. These are the features that show up in FDA submissions and GxP-regulated workflows, and they're what lets Benchling's largest customers — internationally recognizable names developing some of the world's most innovative treatments — operate with confidence in regulated environments. As a Software Engineer at the High Seniority level, you will be the senior engineering authority for the Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams — owning horizontally impactful systems while directly enabling the product features enterprise customers depend on. This role sits squarely at the intersection of platform and product work, and demands both deep technical expertise and strong product sense. You will also serve as an IC leader across the broader Applications division, helping set engineering direction that reaches well beyond any single team. This role reports to the Head of Engineering for Applications and works day-to-day as the senior IC anchor for the Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams. ## RESPONSIBILITIES - Serve as the senior technical authority for the Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams, driving the design and development of the Notebook, structured data-input, and enterprise lifecycle systems that anchor the Benchling product. - Independently architect and implement solutions to complex, open-ended problems — from system architecture to backend models and APIs to rich frontend UI — in areas such as comprehensive audit coverage, review and approval flows, scalable export systems, backups, and document lifecycle management. - Lead large, multi-quarter initiatives: break down ambiguous requirements into concrete technical plans and iterative delivery milestones, designing for scale and reliability across a growing enterprise customer base. - Use technical decision-making as a tool of engineering strategy — knowing when to leverage existing platform capabilities, when to take on technical debt deliberately, and when to preserve optionality for the long term. - Act as a force multiplier across the Applications division: help set engineering direction, raise standards for quality and architecture, and influence technical choices beyond your immediate teams. - Provide technical leadership through code review, architectural guidance, and mentorship of engineers across all experience levels. - Partner closely with product management, design, and cross-functional stakeholders to translate customer needs — including regulatory and compliance needs — into technical solutions. - Explore and evaluate opportunities to leverage AI and LLMs to improve data capture, audit reporting, and compliance workflows for our customers. - Collaborate with other teams to ensure our horizontal systems integrate seamlessly and enable product development across the organization. - Own end-to-end delivery of critical features — from planning and development through deployment, maintenance, and monitoring — and help scale our tooling, engineering processes, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding. ## QUALIFICATIONS - 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a demonstrated progression of increasing scope and impact. - Experience as a technical lead on significant projects involving multiple engineers across multiple quarters. - Strong experience building backend systems and APIs for cloud-based web applications, plus the ability to build full-stack when needed. Our stack is a comprehensive React frontend and a Python backend on a predominantly relational data model in Postgres; direct experience is appreciated but not required if you can pick it up quickly. - Proven ability to design scalable, robust architectures that align with business requirements and long-term maintainability, especially for horizontal systems that many teams build on. - Track record of independently scoping and driving initiative-level work whose impact spans multiple teams and shapes an entire product area or division. - Excellent written and verbal communication skills — able to produce clear technical designs and use influence rooted in technical expertise to align other engineers on an implementation strategy. - Demonstrated ability to mentor and develop other engineers, raising the team's bar in areas such as testing, performance, and maintainability. - Interest in learning about life sciences. Prior biotech knowledge is appreciated but not required; enthusiasm to learn is essential. (Experience with audit, compliance, or GxP-regulated software is a plus.) ## HOW WE WORK We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday). #LI-Hybrid #BI-Hybrid ## #LI-GP1 Benchling welcomes everyone. We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences. We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. ## About Benchling ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Benchling provides a cloud-based platform for biotechnology research and development, uniting data, automation, and AI to accelerate scientific discovery. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series F) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2012 - **Founders**: Sajith Wickramasekara, Ashu Singhal ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: Life Sciences Software, Biotechnology R&D, Scientific Cloud Computing - **Target customers**: B2B; biopharma companies (including more than half of the world's top 50), academic labs, agritech, and industrial biotech organizations. - **Mission or purpose statement**: "To unlock the power of biotechnology" by helping scientists unite data, automation, and AI to bring new products and discoveries to life faster. ## Products & Services - **Benchling Platform (R&D Cloud)**: A unified, cloud-based platform for biotech R&D. It includes an electronic lab notebook (ELN), laboratory information management system (LIMS), and scientific data management. It allows teams to plan, record, and share experiments, automate workflows, and use AI tools. - **Benchling AI**: An integrated AI layer that includes "The AI Scientist," which connects predictive models, structured data, and wet lab execution into a single loop. It designs experiments, routes lab automation, captures results, and recommends next steps. - **Developer Platform**: An open, flexible platform with APIs, app integrations, and a custom interface designer, allowing organizations to build custom apps and connect data from instruments and other software. - **Services & Support**: Implementation, advisory, and support services from a team of experts. Also offers "Benchling Learning Labs" for team training and certification. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (last reported valuation was $6.1 billion in 2021 after a Series F round). - **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$412M** across 8 rounds. Annual revenue is estimated at **$50M** (per LinkedIn). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Menlo Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Accel, Y Combinator, and others. Customers include Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma companies. - **Growth Signals**: Over 200,000 scientists use the platform; trusted by 1,300+ organizations; 642 employees with 2.2% YoY headcount growth; active job postings (49 open roles); LinkedIn follower growth of 28.4% year-over-year. ## Competitive Advantages - **Purpose-built for biology**: Unlike generic software, Benchling is built specifically for complex life sciences R&D, modeling data for biomolecules, cell lines, and more. - **AI-native platform**: AI is embedded at every step, with "The AI Scientist" closing the loop between experiment design, execution, and data capture. - **Network effects**: Over 200,000 scientists and 1,300+ organizations use the platform, creating a strong ecosystem and data network effect. - **Deep industry penetration**: Trusted by more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma companies, providing a strong moat against competitors. - **Open and flexible**: Offers APIs, integrations, and a custom interface designer, allowing it to adapt to diverse scientific workflows. ## Strategic Focus - **AI-first R&D**: Deeply integrating AI agents and models into the scientific workflow to compress decades of R&D into years. - **Platform expansion**: Continuing to build out the "AI Scientist" capability and expanding the developer platform for custom applications. - **Customer growth**: Deepening relationships with existing enterprise customers (top 50 biopharma) while expanding into adjacent fields like agritech and industrial biotech. - **International presence**: Operating in 15 countries, including Switzerland, UK, France, Denmark, and Canada, with continued global expansion. ## Why Work Here - **Mission-driven work**: Employees directly contribute to accelerating breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture, and materials science. - **Culture of curiosity**: The company emphasizes a growth mindset, continuous learning, and treating mistakes as opportunities to reflect and grow. - **Strong benefits**: Includes dedicated mental health benefits (therapy sessions), monthly wellness stipend, winter holiday shutdown, and active employee resource groups (ERGs) with executive sponsorship. - **Community and connection**: Regular social hours, themed all-hands meetings, cross-functional events, and a strong emphasis on building community both in-person and virtually. - **Hybrid/Office policy**: Has offices in multiple locations (San Francisco, and international offices in Switzerland, UK, France, Denmark, Canada) with in-person social hours and team events. - **Engineering culture**: Nearly half the team comes from an R&D background, blending scientific and technological expertise. Open roles include Software Engineer (Agents, Developer Platform), Engineering Leader (Molecular Biology, Infrastructure), and more. ## Sources 1. [benchling.com](https://www.benchling.com/) 2. [benchling.com/about-us](https://www.benchling.com/about-us) 3. [benchling.com/careers](https://www.benchling.com/careers) 4. [benchling.com/life-at-benchling](https://www.benchling.com/life-at-benchling) 5. 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