Software Engineer, Backend (Domain Graph & APIs)

ROLE OVERVIEW

As a technical leader working on the Domain Graph and API team, you’ll build foundational technologies relied on by our customers’ engineers and internal engineers at Benchling. Benchling is a system of record so giving our customers APIs with full, consistent coverage is a key component of our product strategy. Over 80% of our customers use custom built software in the critical path of their business processes and that software is powered by the APIs that this team owns!

This team is also fundamentally evolving Benchling’s core development stack to be domain driven and API first. They define best practices for other platform and product teams to ensure modeling consistency, as well as defining interfaces to adjacent systems that persist data and generate change events. As a technical leader, you will have the opportunity to shape the technical strategy and drive adoption across Benchling product and platform teams and your work will be key to several company-level goals.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• End-to-End Ownership: Lead projects from initial design through to deployment, ensuring high-quality deliverables and effective problem-solving.
• API Design: Collaborate with application teams to design and implement robust domain models and public APIs that meet customer needs and platform requirements.
• Platform Optimization: Develop and maintain core platform components to ensure scalability, consistency, data integrity, and coverage.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with product managers, designers, and other engineers to translate requirements into scalable and efficient software solutions.
• Mentorship and Team Development: Provide mentorship to fellow engineers, contribute to team growth, and drive improvements in engineering processes and tools.
• Performance and Reliability: Implement comprehensive testing, monitoring, and optimization strategies to ensure the reliability and performance of platform systems.
• Innovation and Improvement: Engage in continuous improvement efforts, including re-architecting systems, reducing engineering effort, and enhancing platform capabilities to better serve our internal and external stakeholders.

QUALIFICATIONS 

• Experience: 8+ years of experience in enterprise software engineering (ideally SaaS), with a focus on platform development. Experience in re-architecting systems and leading multi-quarter projects. 
• Technical Skills: Proficiency in backend development, API design, and data management. Experience with architecture migrations and performance optimization is highly desirable. 
• Problem-Solving: Strong problem-solving skills with a proven ability to iterate on feedback and deliver high-impact solutions.
• Collaboration: Excellent interpersonal skills and experience working in a collaborative, cross-functional environment. Willing to work out of our SF office 3 days a week.
• Ownership and Execution: Demonstrated ownership of key platform components, with a focus on product impact and engineering excellence.
• Eagerness to Learn: Enthusiasm for diving into complex technical challenges and a keen interest in the life sciences domain, with a willingness to learn and adapt.

Check out our engineering blog for some examples of past work throughout Benchling. Here are some other examples of recent and future projects for the Domain Graph and API team:

• V3 REST API Release: We are currently preparing to release an updated version of our public REST API that not only will have more features but will also have better consistency and coverage than the current version, V2. This version is built from the ground up using the Domain Graph as the source of truth which will mean that the V3 REST API implementation can be mostly autogenerated.
• Domain Graph Versioning: We have a “Domain Graph” that is our source of truth for the domain model of Benchling. Another team is building a Change Data Capture (CDC) system that will represent changes with the Domain Graph representation of the data. To make that work, we needed to let the CDC system subscribe to changes in the Domain Graph itself so it can update how to represent those models.
• Performance improvements: For other internal systems to use the Domain Graph as their source of truth for data, they use a persistence agnostic internal API that we also own that we call Data Connectors. We’re working on a project now that finds seams between that API and other systems in Benchling and prevents over-fetching by introducing new tooling that automatically translates queries between, e.g. an internal GraphQL API and Data Connectors.

SALARY RANGE

Benchling takes a market-based approach to pay.  The candidate's starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and work location. For this role the base salary range is $177,735 to $240,465. 

To help you determine which zone applies to your location, please see this resource. If you have questions regarding a specific location's zone designation, please contact a recruiter for additional information.

• Competitive salary and equity
• Broad range of medical, dental, and vision plans for employees and their dependents
• Fertility healthcare and family-forming benefits
• Four months of fully paid parental leave
• 401(k) + Employer Match
• Commuter benefits for in-office employees and a generous home office set up stipend for remote employees
• Mental health benefits, including therapy and coaching, for employees and their dependents
• Monthly Wellness stipend
• Learning and development stipend
• Generous and flexible vacation
• Company-wide Summer & Winter holiday shutdown
• Sabbaticals for 5-year and 10-year anniversaries

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