Senior Software Engineer, Bioinformatics - Biotech startup helping dogs! at Embark Veterinary Inc. (Boston, MA)

About the role:

On the Ancestry team, you will work to improve and maintain the bioinformatics pipeline underlying Embark’s breed and ancestry products. This pipeline transforms raw genetic data into a dog’s breed mix and ancestry, doggy relatives, and more. It must run efficiently, reliably, and at a massive scale on AWS. You will work closely with Scientists, Engineers, and Product Managers to solve important scientific problems and develop the next generation of breed and ancestry products. This year is a very exciting time to join Embark; this year the team will:

• Evolve Embark’s architecture and bioinformatics pipelines to enable Embark to continue to scale exponentially.


• Bring to life new and exciting scientific ideas to improve Embark’s best in class Breed and Ancestry products.


• Compound the delightful experiences we provide to our highly rated products.

What you’ll do:

Senior Software Engineers at Embark lead by example through development of high quality, easy to maintain features and enhancements. They have broad experience and excel in a few areas where they have deep, passionate experience.

• Deliver clean, efficient, maintainable code, as well as thorough tests and documentation


• Mentor other software engineers to enable their growth


• Leverage your deep knowledge of our stack to advise your technical leaders how to best tackle problems


• Contribute to improving our technology and development practices via retrospectives and other means, with the goal of continuous improvement of quality and team efficiency

What experience we’re looking for:

• At least a Bachelors in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience


• Expertise in designing, building, testing, maintaining, and operating large-scale distributed data systems




• Experience with systems in genetics/bioinformatics or a related field is preferred but not required




• Deep knowledge of building large, type-annotated analytics codebases in Python


• Knowledge of architectural patterns and experience making architectural decisions


• Experience profiling and optimizing local and distributed systems


• Experience with customer-centric product development


• Expertise with SQL relational databases (PostgreSQL)




• Experience with non-relational databases is preferred but not required




• Expertise with AWS or similar cloud technologies


• Understands DevOps, as well as Agile development philosophies


• Willingness to participate in on-call rotation including some weekends and holidays


• Excellent verbal and written communication skills


• Strong people leadership skills and project leadership skills as well as strong technical leadership skills


• Passion for dogs and genetics

What we can offer:

At Embark, we might be dog lovers, but we’re passionate about people too. We’re committed to building an inclusive culture where all employees can belong and flourish. Here are some of our benefits and perks:

• A flexible vacation policy so you can take off the time you need when you need it


• Paid maternal and paternal leave (plus paw-ternity leave for new pets)


• Every other Friday off each summer


• Dog-friendly office near South Station, Boston (when we get back to the office), with some flexibility (eg work from home at least 2 days a week, flexibility around child care needs, etc)


• Perks tailored for dog lovers including subsidized pet insurance and dog-walking services


• Startup perks with big-company benefits (401k match, a generous bonus structure, commuter benefits, top-of-the-line healthcare, HSA/FSA)


• Competitive salaries and equity participation — every employee gets stock options


• Fully-stocked office snack bar and regular office events


• New iMacs and MacBook Pros, or laptops running Linux


• Continuing education, including attending conferences and company-provided resources to help with individual growth and development

Embark is an equal opportunity workplace and values diversity at our company. We are committed to equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship status, sexual orientation, age, disability status, marital status, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected by federal, state or local laws. See also EEO is the Law.

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