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Salary: USD 192,000 - 256,000 / annual
Lila is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Lab Software (LaS) team, which serves as the execution layer connecting Lila's AI-driven science platform to AI Science Factories (AISFs) and real laboratory instruments. This is a full-stack role with a strong backend focus, responsible for designing and building high-performance APIs, orchestrating complex lab workflows, managing diverse data systems (SQL, NoSQL, vector databases), and ensuring reliable integration between AI applications and physical lab infrastructure.
You will own the complete stack of lab integration: orchestration of labflows, instrument integrations, bi-directional data transfer, and the UI/UX that AI scientists and lab operators use to interact with the system. Key responsibilities include designing secure, well-documented APIs; developing scalable database architectures; implementing front-end and backend services with emphasis on performance and maintainability; diagnosing and optimizing system bottlenecks; leveraging AWS, Kubernetes, and modern DevOps practices; and collaborating cross-functionally with ML researchers, data engineers, and product teams.
Required qualifications: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; 8+ years of production engineering experience building and deploying large-scale systems; strong backend expertise with full-stack capabilities (React, TypeScript, TailWind, FastAPI, SQL/NoSQL, Python, Pydantic); hands-on experience with AI coding assistants; excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills; and proven ability to own complex backend challenges while balancing scalability, performance, and maintainability.
Bonus experience includes laboratory software for life sciences or material sciences, lab automation and robotics, software orchestration platforms (Airflow, Prefect, Temporal, Dagster), and cloud/DevOps expertise (AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, CloudFormation, GitHub Actions).
