Senior Software Engineer, Lab Informatics (Benchling)

About the Role

The Institute for Protein Innovation is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join our Lab Informatics team and help architect, build, and evolve the Institute's digital laboratory platform, with Benchling as a core component. This role will partner closely with scientists, automation engineers, and data teams to translate complex scientific workflows into intuitive, scalable, and reliable digital solutions.

Primary Responsibilities

• Partner with scientists and cross-functional teams to understand experimental workflows, gather requirements, and translate scientific needs into effective technical solutions.
• Design, develop, and maintain the Institute's Benchling environment, including schemas, Registry entities, Results, Inventory, workflows, notebook templates, applications, and other platform capabilities.
• Develop production-quality applications and integrations using the Benchling Developer Platform, including APIs, SDKs, Apps, App Canvas, events/webhooks, and related technologies.
• Design and maintain scalable scientific data models that support data integrity, traceability, interoperability, and long-term reuse.
• Build scientific analytics, dashboards, and data applications using Benchling Insights, SQL, Python, and appropriate visualization and application frameworks.
• Integrate Benchling with laboratory instruments, automation platforms, internal applications, data systems, and external scientific software.
• Design and implement workflows that enable reliable transfer of experimental data between laboratory automation systems and Benchling.
• Establish and follow software engineering best practices, including source control, code review, automated testing, CI/CD, documentation, deployment, monitoring, and maintainable software architecture.
• Ensure consistent implementation of data standards and maintain high levels of data quality and integrity across the laboratory informatics platform.
• Serve as a technical subject matter expert for Benchling, advising scientists and technical teams on platform architecture, data modeling, integrations, and development best practices.
• Troubleshoot complex platform, application, and integration issues; identify root causes and implement durable, scalable solutions.
• Contribute to the technical roadmap for laboratory informatics and evaluate new technologies and approaches that improve scientific productivity and data accessibility.
• Develop technical documentation, user guidance, and training materials to support adoption of laboratory informatics tools.
• Provide technical leadership through architecture discussions, code reviews, development standards, and mentorship of engineers and technical colleagues.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Bioinformatics, Software Engineering, Computational Biology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering, scientific informatics, or related industry experience.
• Hands-on experience developing on the Benchling platform, including Benchling Apps, App Canvas, APIs/SDK, Events, Insights, and/or Data Warehouse.
• Strong Python and SQL development skills.
• Experience developing production-quality applications, APIs, and system integrations.
• Experience with REST APIs, webhooks/event-driven architectures, authentication/authorization, and structured data models.
• Experience with Git, automated testing, code review, CI/CD, and modern software engineering practices.
• Working knowledge of life-science R&D workflows and scientific data.
• Demonstrated ability to translate complex scientific workflows into scalable software solutions and data models.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate directly with scientists and technical stakeholders.

Preferred

• Experience configuring Benchling Registry, Inventory, Results, schemas, workflows, and notebook templates.
• Experience integrating laboratory instruments or automation systems with informatics platforms.
• Experience building scientific dashboards or analytics applications with Plotly/Dash, Streamlit, Tableau, Spotfire, or similar tools.
• Experience in biologics, antibody discovery, protein science, molecular biology, cell engineering, or related life-science R&D.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and containerized application development.

Pay and Benefits

$130,000 - $160,000 a year. IPI provides competitive compensation and an excellent benefits package to support physical, mental and financial health. Highlights of benefits include:

• 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision plans
• Flexible spending accounts and a healthcare reimbursement account
• 401(k) plan with generous 6% employer match – immediately 100% vested
• Generous PTO package
• Commuter and parking reimbursement
• Career development opportunities