Director, Software and Data Engineering (AI)

Location: Emeryville, California, United States; hybrid with 2–3 days on-site. Applicants must have ongoing United States work authorization without employer sponsorship.

Hiring salary range: $268,000–$355,000 USD annually, plus equity participation.

Company

hirify.global is a frontier AI lab for biology building foundation models for life’s molecules and solutions for medicine, agriculture, and related fields.

What you will do

• Lead, mentor, and grow the software engineering team, including technical direction, hiring, organizational development, and execution.
• Own the software and data engineering roadmap while balancing scientific impact, user needs, delivery speed, scalability, and long-term platform strategy.
• Define architecture, system boundaries, and data flows connecting computational design, high-throughput experimentation, analysis, and machine learning.
• Guide development of scientist-facing applications and data systems for experimental design, sample tracking, laboratory automation, assay capture, and analysis.
• Establish data models and standards for identifiers, provenance, lineage, versioning, interoperability, and access control.
• Partner with science, automation, bioinformatics, data science, and ML teams to improve engineering and product practices.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years managing or leading engineers.
• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Bioengineering, Computational Biology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience leading teams that architect and deliver production-quality, data-intensive software platforms.
• Strong foundation in Python, backend systems, databases, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and modern software development practices.
• Experience designing data architectures, schemas, and domain models for complex scientific, experimental, or interconnected workflows.
• Legal authorization to work in the United States is required; employer sponsorship is not available.

Nice to have

• Experience with scientific data infrastructure, research software, LIMS integrations, or scientist-facing applications.
• Experience with Benchling, laboratory automation, instrument integration, sample tracking, or high-throughput experimental platforms.
• Experience connecting experimental workflows with downstream analysis and machine learning.
• Familiarity with biological data from protein engineering, gene editing, sequencing, screening, or mammalian or bacterial systems.
• Frontend development experience and interest in intuitive scientist-facing interfaces.

Culture & Benefits

• High-growth opportunity focused on the future of protein design.
• Competitive compensation package with equity participation.
• 401(k) with a strong employer match.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Generous paid time off, work-life balance, and professional development opportunities.