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Scientific Software Engineer - Full Stack

Emeryville, CA

A Bit About Us

We are Arcadia Science, an evolutionary biology company founded and led by scientists. Our mission is to turn natural innovations into real-world solutions by developing systematic and quantitative approaches to leveraging biology for therapeutics R&D. We share our research as openly as possible to accelerate discovery and make our work broadly useful.
 

About the Role 

Arcadia Science is looking for a software engineer who thrives at the intersection of biology and technology. You'll build the web applications and data infrastructure that connect our wet-lab and computational scientists, turning complex research workflows into intuitive, end-to-end digital experiences.

As a member of the engineering team, you'll work across Arcadia's research and product surface: partnering with bench scientists to understand their workflows, shipping internal tools that make those workflows faster and more reliable, and contributing to data infrastructure that underpins how we explore and share results. Part of this role will be dedicated to the Foundry, Arcadia's division at the interface between R&D and commercial deployment, where you'll build the software layer for AutoOpenRaman, an open-source, automated Raman spectrometer we developed for biological research. This includes a scientific user interface purpose-built for bench scientists, and the data pipeline that takes raw spectra to interpretable results. 

The right person for this role has built products from scratch in fast-moving environments, brings strong product instincts alongside deep technical skills, and is energized by working shoulder-to-shoulder with scientists to understand their problems firsthand. You don't need a biology degree, but you should be genuinely curious about science and eager to learn.

This is an onsite role at our Emeryville headquarters, where daily proximity to researchers, engineers, and cross-functional partners keeps the feedback loop tight and the work grounded in real scientific need.

What you'll work on 

  • Partner with researchers and product designers to identify high-impact problems, then architect and ship solutions through rapid iteration cycles
  • Design, develop, and maintain Arcadia's internal product suite using modern web technologies, building for scalability, performance, and a user experience that works for scientists
  • Build and improve data infrastructure that supports biological research workflows, from ingestion and transformation to exploration and visualization
  • Design and ship a scientific user interface purpose-built for bench scientists, intuitive sample management, run configuration, live acquisition feedback, and results review.
  • Build and maintain agentic AI workflows that expand the team's capacity: automating data QC, interpretation, report generation, and other repeatable analytical tasks
  • Own the full lifecycle of your work: scoping, implementation, testing, deployment, monitoring, and ongoing maintenance

What We Look For

 You'll be well-suited for this role if you have

  • Hands-on experience building products from scratch in fast-moving environments, with a track record of shipping software that non-engineers actually depend on
  • Experience designing and shipping user interfaces for scientific or technical workflows, with genuine care for the non-engineer end user: clean layout, clear state, graceful error handling
  • Proficiency in Python and TypeScript; comfortable owning both backend services and frontend applications
  • Experience building data pipelines for scientific data: ingestion, transformation, QC, and structured storage
  • Ability to work directly with bench scientists to develop deep empathy for their workflows and translate that understanding into software that fits how they actually work
  • Deep AI literacy: you actively use AI tools in your own development workflow, you have strong opinions about which tools and approaches work, and you understand the architecture of agentic systems well enough to build and maintain them, not just call an API
  • Demonstrated experience building with AI: using LLMs, agents, or AI-assisted development tools to meaningfully expand what you can ship and maintain

Nice to have

  • Experience building software for scientific instruments or laboratory hardware
  • Background or coursework in evolutionary biology, molecular biology, or bioinformatics
  • Contributions to open-source scientific software projects

AI literacy

We expect this role to operate as more than an individual contributor. You will build and maintain a team of agents requiring more than familiarity with AI tools: you should be current on the state of coding agents and LLM-assisted development, have opinions on which approaches are production-ready, and be able to make architectural decisions about when to build agentic workflows and when not to. We expect you to stay current as the field moves.

Compensation

Successful applicants can expect to be compensated between $160,000–$195,000 with benefits and a competitive equity offering, depending on experience level. The position will require the individual to be on-site at our Emeryville, California headquarters. 

Application Process 

Please submit a resume and fully answer all application questions addressing your interest in and qualifications for the position. The review process will involve in-person interviews and a short, practical work test. Employment offers are contingent on reference and background checks. 

Arcadia is an equal opportunity workplace; we welcome people from all backgrounds and communities. We provide competitive compensation and practical benefits to keep you happy and healthy so that you can do your best work. 

 

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