Platform Software Engineer

About us

🌽 Safeguarding the future of food

Biographica is on a mission to accelerate the development of more productive, sustainable, nutritious & climate-resilient food sources. To achieve this, we're building the world’s first ML-driven target discovery platform for crop gene-editing.

🧬 From drug target discovery to crop target discovery

While gene-editing of crops is becoming ever more efficient, identifying which genes to edit and how remains a significant challenge. To overcome this bottleneck, we use cutting-edge deep learning to accurately and efficiently identify high value genetic targets for crop gene-editing. Our approach draws inspiration from recent advancements in the drug discovery space, incorporating LLMs, transformers and graph-based technologies to build a best-in-class discovery platform for plant sciences.

👥 Team

Led by co-founders Dom (CTO) and Cecy (CEO), we are now a team of 12, including 2 ML engineers, 2 data engineers, 3 bioinformaticians. We also have a remote, part-time intern conducting ML research. We primarily work together in person from our office in Spitalfields, London, 4 days per week.

What we're looking for

As our first dedicated software engineering hire, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring that our scientists, ML engineers, and data engineers can work efficiently and at scale. You will take ownership of our target identification software tool, ensuring it is fully tested, scalable and seamlessly connected with other elements of our platform. To do this you will work closely with the science and data teams to ensure that the tool is maximally useful for answering scientific questions and maximally flexible and modular to accommodate future improvements. Additionally, there is potential to explore novel technologies, such as agentic LLMs, to enhance multiple internal scientific tools being developed at Biographica.

Important note:We are looking for candidates with experience in biology even if it isn’t in a research capacity. This job will involve continual work at the interface of software and biology so it’s important that any candidate has background knowledge, the desire to learn more about the intricacies of the subject and the willingness to integrate biological considerations into their software decision making.

Core Responsibilities

• Lead the software development of our target identification tool, ensuring it is robustly tested, scalable, and well-integrated with the broader platform.
• Work closely with science, ML, and data engineering teams to understand their product needs and translate these into functional software.
• Architect the tool with modularity and future enhancements in mind, ensuring it can handle evolving scientific and computational requirements.

Additional Responsibilities

• Evaluate and potentially integrate emerging technologies, such as agentic LLMs, to enhance internal tools and workflows.
• Develop integrations with other internal tools, with a particularfocus on seamless flow of data.
• Identify opportunities for process and tech improvements that benefit the wider scientific team.
• Collaborate on ad-hoc projects and support various engineering efforts as needed.

Core Competencies

• Strong proficiency in Python and a deep understanding of backend development principles.
• Exposure to and experience using at least one application development framework, with an emphasis on creating internal tools rather than consumer-facing products.
• Some experience or familiarity with biology, even if it isn’t in a research capacity, and a willingness to learn more about the field.
• Excellent communication skills and a proven ability to work effectively across diverse technical teams.
• A pragmatic approach to troubleshooting and resolving technical challenges in a fast-paced environment.

Nice to have Competencies

• Experience with AWS services and familiarity with Kubernetes environments (GCP exposure is a plus).
• Interest in emerging technologies and a proactive attitude toward exploring tools like agentic LLMs.

Benefits

• Competitive salary & equity options
• 25 days annual leave & option for 2 weeks work from anywhere policy
• Benefits package
• Career development opportunities as the company scales
• Ownership of ambitious, mission-driven work with real-world impact
• Vibrant, innovative & supportive work environment with a committed team
• Access to conferences, events & professional development resources