Senior Software Engineer (Data Processing Infrastructure) – London Part Time

Synthace
Senior Software Engineer (Data Processing Infrastructure) – London We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help us build out our data processing framework. Working remotely for the moment, you’ll eventually be based out of our HQ in the exciting new Life Sciences hub at White City Place , West London, with flexible working available by arrangement. About Synthace
Named by the World Economic Forum as one of the world’s 30 Technology Pioneers 2016, Synthace is building a software platform to transform the way biology is done. Our revolutionary software platform – Antha – lowers the level of entry for scientists to introduce automation to their work, while allowing specialist technicians to get even more out of the existing equipment in the labs. It is directly contributing to faster, more efficient research into hard to cure diseases such as Cancer. If social impact and knowing your work is having a positive impact on the world is important to you, it doesn’t get much better than this. Antha allows scientists to design biological experiments, simulate them, translate instructions for robotic lab equipment, and visualise complex data sets from the results. As you can imagine, there are a wide range of technical challenges that we are addressing, and the work is rewarding. This is a highly collaborative effort between software developers, biologists, engineers, mathematicians, bioinformaticians, designers and our growing list of industrial partners in the biosciences. Clients already include the likes of Microsoft, BASF, Merck and GSK, and we have ambitious plans to grow our customer base this year. The team and the role
You’ll be working within a tight-knit, friendly and collaborative development team on exciting projects with plenty of technical challenges to get your teeth into. You won’t find any micro-management here – we’re all about trust, enablement and personal ownership. We give you space and autonomy to solve complex problems, while offering support if/when needed. We have a clear company vision, and we’re building a strategy and roadmap to go around this. Everyone knows how their work directly impacts the goals we’re working towards, and everyone’s voice is heard. Followers of best practice will fit in well, but pragmatism is key. We generally take the approach of using the right tool for the job rather than being fixed to any one particular way of doing things. On the back end, we’re using GCP, Kubernetes and GraphQL, but you don’t necessarily need to have deep experience with these – we’re looking for adaptable coders who are curious and who are problem solvers first and foremost. When it comes to personal development and progression we operate to a parallel track model, meaning that ‘Senior’ doesn’t have to mean ‘people management’. We love promoting from within, and if you do want to learn leadership skills we can support you. However, you have a choice and if your preference is to stay hands-on, you can become a senior ‘individual contributor’ and help to lead on technical decisions and direction. If you have a depth of experience writing production level code in any mainstream language (more than one is even better), and get excited by the prospect of solving some seriously interesting and complex technical problems, get in touch! What you could be working on
Your initial focus will primarily be on building data processing infrastructure, but long term there would potentially be an opportunity to work on other projects such as: – Developing new interfaces, drivers, representations and output processing for various robots, incubators and sophisticated laboratory equipment – Contributing to the implementation of algorithm optimisation for robot actions – Designing, building, testing, and maintaining APIs and services – Integrating and deploying custom and off-the-shelf software components – Managing deadlines and priorities in a dynamic environment that blends software and wet-lab development About you:

• Primarily, this is the sort of challenge that will suit you if you enjoy solving hard technical problems and you have a broad range of experience as a software engineer – you’ve probably worked in different sectors, or had to adapt to different types of challenges
• As a Senior Engineer, you should have experience designing and architecting solutions as well as being an extremely competent coder
• You appreciate clean, well designed models, you know what it takes to build robust, reliable, resilient systems, and you take professional pride in building hardened applications
• You’ll need to be seriously well versed in at least one mainstream programming language (more would be great!) such as Python (ideally), Go, Java, C, C++, Rust, etc.
• Having a strong understanding of data structures and algorithms is extremely useful
• You’ll also benefit from having experience with Unix development environments, a working knowledge of common network protocols (HTTP, TLS, GRPC), and a working knowledge of HA and distributed systems
• You enjoy working in collaborative teams and sharing knowledge – there are no lone wolves here
• Excellent communication skills are also a must – we move fast but we talk to each other to make sure we don’t break things

Why join Synthace?

• Work with genuinely extraordinary people
• Open, collaborative, and friendly culture
• Challenging, groundbreaking and exciting work
• Chance to be a part of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, helping us to create tools and systems that allow scientists to do things like cure Cancer faster!

Salary: £90-110k depending on experience Location: West London (remote at the moment due to Covid) Employment type: Permanent (preferred) and Contract opportunities available Other benefits: Equity (stock options), 10% pension, private health, and more! Our diversity gives us strength. We value the wealth of knowledge, different perspectives and insights that come from having a truly diverse group of amazing colleagues, and an important part of the way we work is based around sharing knowledge with each other. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.