Biotechnology is rewriting life as we know it, from the medicines we take, to the crops we grow, the materials we wear, and the household goods that we rely on every day. But moving at the new speed of science requires better technology.
Benchling’s mission is to unlock the power of biotechnology. The world’s most innovative biotech companies use Benchling’s R&D Cloud to power the development of breakthrough products and accelerate time to milestone and market. Come help us bring modern software to modern science.
ROLE OVERVIEW
At Benchling, we’re building the data foundation that powers the future of life sciences R&D—and that means tackling hard, high-impact engineering challenges. As a Data Platform Engineer, you’ll help design and scale the infrastructure that enables real-time scientific discovery across our platform. You’ll work on multi-tenant systems, change data capture (CDC) pipelines, and distributed processing frameworks that connect data seamlessly across teams and products.This is an opportunity to own initiatives end-to-end—from defining scope and writing functional specs, to building, deploying, and operating core systems at scale.
You’ll collaborate closely with application engineers, platform architects, and product teams, setting the standard for data integrity, privacy, and reliability in both internal and customer-facing systems. The work you do here will have a direct line of sight to real-world health outcomes.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Own major initiatives from concept through rollout, independently defining scope, writing specifications, prototyping, testing, and scaling production systems.Build and operate high-throughput distributed messaging platforms (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis) that power CDC and cross-platform data integration.
- Design and implement data transformations and pipelines across functional datasets, proactively ensuring integrity, security, and privacy.
- Establish and own Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for batch and streaming pipelines, driving performance and reliability improvements.Create CI/CD pipelines for platform provisioning and lifecycle management, and build internal tooling to operate large-scale systems efficiently.
- Partner with teams across Application and Platform to define best practices and patterns for interacting with the data platform.
- Champion a metrics-driven culture and influence how Benchling teams design, consume, and operate data at scale.
QUALIFICATIONS
- 2+ years of software engineering experience (or equivalent track record), including independently delivering impactful technical projects.
- Experience with distributed data processing technologies (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, Spark, Flink, or similar).Proven ability to design, build, and operate scalable, distributed systems end-to-end.Strong scripting skills (e.g., Python) for automation and tooling.Hands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible, Chef) and container orchestration (Kubernetes, Amazon ECS).
- Demonstrated ability to define project scope, create functional specifications, plan testing, and measure success through metrics.
- Strong communication skills—able to translate complex technical concepts into clear written documentation and actionable insights.
- Customer-focused mindset and a drive to create measurable impact for scientists and researchers worldwide.
HOW WE WORK
We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday).
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 $141,104 to $190,906. 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.Total Compensation includes the following:
- Competitive total rewards package
- 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 Winter holiday shutdown
- Sabbaticals for 5-year and 10-year anniversaries
#LI-Hybrid #BI-Hybrid #LI-MD1
Benchling welcomes everyone.
We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences. We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
Please be aware that Benchling will never request personal information, payment, or sensitive details outside of Greenhouse or via email. All official communications will come from an @benchling.com email address or from an approved vendor alias. If you are contacted by someone claiming to represent Benchling and are unsure of their legitimacy, please reach out to us at recruiting-fraud-alert@benchling.com to verify the communication.
