---
title: 'Staff / Principal Software Engineer at GenBio AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-principal-software-engineer-genbio-ai-palo-alto-1r16qrpaehzg'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Staff / Principal Software Engineer at GenBio AI

- **Company:** GenBio AI
- **Location:** Palo Alto, CA
- **Compensation:** $250k–$350k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-18
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/genbio/65ff04fe-d8da-4a0a-b712-e0bb87761821

## Job description

GenBio AI is building the Virtual Cell World Model - a persistent, multimodal AI system that predicts, simulates, and ultimately programs cellular behavior. Rather than producing isolated predictions, the Virtual Cell enables scientists to query cellular states, perform virtual perturbations, and design new biological interventions within a unified computational world. Together with AIDO Foundry, our AI-native engineering framework for automating Virtual Cell development, we are building the software infrastructure for the next generation of AI-driven drug discovery. We are seeking an experienced Staff to Principal-level Software Engineer to build the user-facing platform that brings these capabilities to computational biologists, experimental scientists, and pharmaceutical researchers. This is a senior individual contributor role for engineers who enjoy solving challenging systems problems while working closely with AI researchers and product teams.

## Responsibilities

- Act as a senior technical leader to build the software platform for programmable biology, developing production-grade backend services and APIs for our Virtual Cell products.

- Design clean, robust interfaces that seamlessly connect frontend applications, core business logic, massive biological databases, and state-of-the-art AI inference engines.

- Architect and develop highly scalable systems for complex biological simulations, experiment management, workflow orchestration, and the processing of multimodal biological data.

- Drive continuous improvements in platform performance and reliability through highly efficient architecture design, strategic caching, asynchronous execution, and optimized distributed infrastructure.

- Collaborate closely with AI researchers to translate cutting-edge foundation models into reliable, user-facing scientific products that enable virtual perturbations and hypothesis generation.

- Work cross-functionally across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and machine learning teams to deliver deeply intuitive computational experiences for biologists, experimental scientists, and pharmaceutical researchers.

Qualifications:

- Extensive industry experience (typically 8+ years) operating at a Staff or Principal level, with a proven track record of building production web services, scalable APIs, and complex distributed backend systems.

- Exceptional software engineering fundamentals, demonstrating a mastery of clean architecture, modular system design, and the ability to write highly maintainable, performant code.

- Deep, hands-on experience integrating large-scale AI, LLMs, or machine learning inference systems into highly available production environments.

- Proven ability to solve challenging, ambiguous systems problems from the ground up, moving from concept to scalable execution.

- Outstanding cross-functional communication and leadership skills, with the ability to bridge the gap between deeply technical engineering teams, AI researchers, and scientific product teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

- Domain knowledge or prior experience working with computational biology, genomics, transcriptomics, protein/molecular structures, healthcare, or scientific software.

- Familiarity with building tools for scientific simulation, automated laboratory experiment management, or complex workflow orchestration.

- Experience building unified computational frameworks (similar to our AIDO Foundry) that accelerate the development and deployment of AI-native platforms.

Join us as we embark on this journey to redefine the future of biology and medicine. We are an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. GenBio AI participates in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify program to confirm the employment eligibility of all newly hired employees. For more information on E-Verify, please visit www.e-verify.gov.

## About GenBio AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: GenBio AI develops the world's first AI-Driven Digital Organism (AIDO), an integrated system of multiscale foundation models to predict, simulate, and program biology for drug design, bioengineering, and personalized medicine.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Startup, Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Eric Xing (Chief Scientist), Le Song (CTO), Ziv Bar-Joseph (Co-Founder & CSO), Emma Lundberg (Co-Founder & Chief Strategic Advisor)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: AI-Driven Biology / Generative Biology / Research Services
- **Target Customers**: B2B – pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, and biomedical research institutions
- **Mission**: To achieve comprehensive, actionable empirical understandings of the mechanisms underlying all organismal physiologies and diseases, paving the way for a new paradigm in drug design, bio-engineering, personalized medicine, and fundamental biomedical research, all powered by Generative Biology.

## Products & Services
- **AI-Driven Digital Organism (AIDO)**: An integrated system of multiscale foundation models covering DNA, RNA, Protein, and Cell data. Used for predicting, simulating, and programming biological systems from molecular interactions to virtual cells.
- **Generative Biology Platform**: A suite of AI models that enable drug design, vaccine safety prediction, treatment personalization, and clinical diagnostics.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – 1 prior funding round (amount undisclosed). Headcount: 53 employees (+84.8% YoY growth).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Founding team backed by prominent financial investors; scientific collaborations with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI). Key personnel include Eran Segal and Fabian Theis as Senior Scientific Fellows.
- **Growth Signals**: Rapid headcount growth (84.8% YoY), global expansion with offices in Palo Alto, Paris, and Abu Dhabi, release of six foundational AI models covering DNA, RNA, Protein, and Cell, and strong LinkedIn following (33,454 followers, +155.9% yearly).

## Competitive Advantages
- **World-Class Founding Team**: Led by renowned AI scientists Eric Xing (CMU/MBZUAI President) and Le Song, with senior fellows from top academic institutions. Combines deep expertise in AI, machine learning, distributed computing, and computational biology.
- **First-Mover in AI-Driven Digital Organism**: Pioneering the concept of a unified, multiscale AI model for biology, which is a significant moat against competitors building single-purpose models.
- **Global, Cross-Disciplinary Talent**: Team spans 5 countries (US, France, UAE, Canada, UK) and blends computational biology, machine learning, molecular science, bioinformatics, and business expertise.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current Priorities**: Continue developing and refining the AIDO platform, expand the suite of foundation models, grow the global team, and establish partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotech companies to commercialize discoveries.
- **Direction for Growth**: Scaling the engineering and research teams, deepening integration of AI with wet-lab biology, and expanding into new therapeutic areas and bioengineering applications.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven Culture**: A shared commitment to transforming biology through AI, with a focus on responsible AI practices and ethical oversight. The company emphasizes ambitious, game-changing goals.
- **Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration**: Research and engineering blend seamlessly—scientists engage in software development, engineers participate in biological research. All technical hires are “Members of Technical Staff.”
- **Flexible Work & Global Hubs**: Most roles require regular presence in Palo Alto, Paris, or Abu Dhabi, but the company offers 52 flexible remote workdays per year per local policy. Relocation support is provided.
- **Competitive Compensation**: Includes competitive salary, equity, robust retirement plan matching, performance recognition, and regular reviews.
- **Generous Benefits**: Premium health, dental, and vision coverage, mental health resources, fixed PTO, generous parental leave, annual education stipend, home office stipends, and commuter benefits.
- **Rapid Growth & Impact**: With 84.8% headcount growth in the past year and only 53 employees, new hires have direct impact on the company’s foundational technology and strategy.
- **Open Roles (as of search date)**: Product Engineer (Palo Alto, on-site) and Research Scientist, Applied Science (Palo Alto, on-site). Internship applications accepted via Lever.

## Sources
1. [genbio.ai – Careers Page](https://genbio.ai/careers/)
2. [genbio.ai – Introducing GenBio AI](https://genbio.ai/introducing-genbio-ai/)
3. [genbio.ai – Research Page](https://genbio.ai/research-2/)
4. [LinkedIn – GenBio AI Company Profile](https://linkedin.com/company/genbioai)
5. [Lever – GenBio AI Job Postings](https://jobs.lever.co/genbio)

## Other roles at GenBio AI

- [Director, Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/director-engineering-genbio-ai-palo-alto-23ja6v3twf5b) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Research Scientist, Applied Science](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-applied-science-genbio-ai-palo-alto-y05c3v3rk2yq) — Palo Alto, CA
- [Staff / Principal Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-principal-software-engineer-cloudzero-san-francisco-mbck6b34av12) — San Francisco, CA