Lead Software Engineer, Platform at PostEra

At PostEra, we are building the modern, 21st-century biopharma company. Our mission is to accelerate the discovery of new medicines for patients through Proton, our proprietary AI platform for medicinal chemistry. We are currently advancing an internal pipeline focused on Women's Health and Reproductive Medicine while simultaneously driving small-molecule programs through high-impact partnerships with industry leaders like Pfizer and Amgen. Having secured over $1 billion in AI partnerships and led major open-science initiatives like the COVID Moonshot, we are committed to a minimalist organizational structure that prioritizes scientific discovery and cross-disciplinary collaboration over complex hierarchies.

The role

We are looking for a Lead Software Engineer to join our team on a full-time, remote basis. This is a senior-level position where you will play a critical role in shaping the systems design of our Proton platform. You will balance hands-on development with technical leadership, ensuring our infrastructure can support numerous concurrent drug discovery projects at industry-leading speeds. We value engineers who lead by example, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement.

Core responsibilities

• Lead the architectural design and development of scalable web applications and microservices, utilizing cloud providers like AWS, container orchestration, and infrastructure as code best practices.
• Mentor and manage a small team of engineers, facilitating knowledge sharing, conducting code reviews, and defining technical standards to support team growth.
• Collaborate directly with scientists and machine learning experts to drive innovative projects, such as scaling molecular search to billions of compounds and integrating complex AI workflows into production.

Skills and experience

To be successful in this role, you should bring a strong foundation in software engineering and a passion for building robust systems. We require the following qualifications:

• At least 5 years of professional experience alongside a bachelor's degree or higher in a relevant field.
• Proven expertise in systems design and backend web development.
• A genuine interest in technical mentorship and people management.
• Proficiency with Python, modern frontend frameworks, and relational databases like PostgreSQL.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure, container orchestration, and IaC.

While not strictly required, we value candidates who have experience integrating ML systems into production, familiarity with workflow tools like Kubernetes or Airflow, and a background in designing agentic workflows.

Compensation and benefits

We offer a competitive salary range of 190,000 USD to 220,000 USD. In addition to base compensation, you will receive equity between 0.10% and 0.20%. We also provide the flexibility of fully remote work to support our global team.

How to apply

If you are excited about the intersection of AI and drug discovery and want to help us deliver life-saving therapies to patients, we would love to hear from you. Please reach out to our hiring manager, Matt Robinson, to express your interest and share your background.