Director, Software Engineering

Job description

At Element Biosciences, we are passionate about our mission to empower the scientific community with more freedom and flexibility to accelerate our collective impact on humanity. We have built a highly efficient product-driven organization where employees can learn, grow, and thrive in a challenging but encouraging environment. We are committed to scientific integrity, collegiality, honesty, objectivity, and openness. We're hiring a **Director of Software Engineering** to lead a team of developers building the software that powers our multi-omic instruments and platforms. Your team's surface area spans frontend, backend, cloud services, instrument software, CLI/API, and agentic tooling -- across customer-facing products and internal tools that keep the rest of the organization moving fast. This is a hands-on Director role. You'll spend roughly 60% of your time as an IC -- writing production-grade code, driving architecture, and running design reviews -- and 40% managing, mentoring, and growing your team. You'll set direction across the full stack, own delivery for your team's products, and act as the connective tissue between product, chemistry, hardware, and adjacent software teams. Our software supports both research and regulated markets, so you'll need to move fast where you can and hold the line on design controls and V&V where it matters. We're an AI-forward org. Our engineers use Cursor, Claude, and other AI tooling daily, and we're actively rolling out agentic SDLC workflows across the software function. You'll be expected to champion and shape that adoption for your team. You are a senior technical leader who has shipped production-grade software across the full stack, is comfortable getting hands-on in any layer, and has a track record of building and growing high-performing engineering teams. You bring grit, a bias for action, and a can-do attitude when things get hard. This role will report to our VP, Software and will be a daily onsite role in San Diego, CA. If you possess the following and want to make a meaningful impact, we invite you to explore this role. **Essential Functions and Responsibilities:** - Lead, mentor, and grow a team of software developers spanning frontend, backend, cloud, and instrument software - Set technical direction, define priorities, and align team execution with company goals and product roadmaps - Own hiring, 1:1s, performance reviews, career development, and resourcing decisions for the team - Foster a culture of ownership, quality, collaboration, and continuous improvement - Manage team budget, capacity planning, and cross-team dependencies; partner with peer leaders across Informatics, AI, Product, Hardware, and Chemistry - Champion and roll out agentic SDLC practices -- Cursor, Claude, and AI-driven workflows -- across your team, into the broader software org, and help shape best practices for the larger company - Contribute to overall software processes, practices, training, and quality/security assurances for the software department - Contribute hands-on across the stack: frontend (React), backend (Go), cloud services (AWS), workflow orchestration (Temporal), instrument software (Ubuntu), and CLI/API, and agentic tooling - Drive architecture and design for customer-facing products and internal tooling; run design reviews and set the bar for production-grade code, testing, and observability - Own end-to-end delivery for one or more product areas -- from requirements through deployment and sustaining - Partner with product owners, chemistry, hardware, and adjacent software teams to translate multi-omic workflows into scalable, performant software - Debug hard cross-system issues, root-cause complex bugs, and jump in on customer-blocking problems when needed - Prototype quickly with AI tools to validate ideas, pressure-test specs, and de-risk approaches before they reach the team - Advocate for the engineering systems, tools, and workflows that accelerate long-term product velocity - Support both research-market and regulated software development within your team's scope - Own or oversee design controls, verification and validation documentation, risk analysis, and traceability for regulated products (IEC 62304, ISO 13485, IVDR, FDA 21 CFR Part 820) - Partner with regulatory affairs and QMS teams to support audits, inspections, and submissions **Education and Experience:** - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Bioengineering, or related field (advanced degree preferred) - 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years directly managing engineering teams - Track record shipping production-grade software across the full stack -- frontend, backend, cloud services, and workflow orchestration - Hands-on fluency with our stack or close equivalents: Go, React, MongoDB, Redis, gRPC, GraphQL, Temporal, Ubuntu, AWS - Daily fluency with AI coding assistants (Cursor, Claude, or similar) and demonstrated experience introducing or scaling agentic SDLC workflows within a team - Experience shipping software that spans instrumentation, cloud SaaS, and CLI/API tooling - Strong analytical, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills; comfortable presenting to executives, customers, and technical stakeholders - Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment while balancing IC contribution and team leadership - Experience with life sciences, multi-omic, DNA sequencing, or scientific instrumentation software - Experience with regulated software workflows -- IEC 62304, ISO 13485, IVDR, or FDA 21 CFR Part 820 -- including design controls, traceability, and V&V documentation for SaMD or instrument software - Experience shipping ML/AI features -- traditional ML pipelines and/or LLM/agent-based features (RAG, tool use, evals) - Cross-organizational or inter-company collaboration experience **Physical Requirements:** - Must be flexible in working hours as this position may require customer support during non-regular business hours **Location:** - San Diego – on-site **Travel:** - List amount of travel required or anticipated, if any. **Job Type:** - Full-time, Part-time, Exempt/Non-exempt **Base Compensation Pay Range:** - $180,000 - $254,000 *In addition to base compensation noted above, you will be eligible for stock options, discretionary annual bonus, no cost health insurance plans, 401k with company match, and flexible paid time off.* *Please note: Base compensation will depend on multiple factors, including geographic location, qualifications, and experience.* We foster an environment such that all people are afforded the freedom to pursue their passions without regard to race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin, gender (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, veteran status or any other characteristics protected by law.