Full-Time

Senior Software Engineer

Data Platform

Updated on 9/4/2026

Profluent

Profluent

51-200 employees

AI-designed bespoke proteins for genetic therapies

Compensation Overview

$170k - $220k/yr

+ Equity participation

No H1B Sponsorship

Emeryville, CA, USA

Hybrid

Two to three days on-site per week required.

Bachelor's, Master's, PhD

Category
Data & Analytics (1)
Required Skills
Python
Git
BigQuery
Machine Learning
Postgres
Data Engineering
Observability
Data Modeling
Data Governance
DevOps
Google Cloud Platform

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Requirements
  • At least 5 years of software engineering, data engineering, or data platform experience.
  • Strong proficiency in Python and modern software development practices, including Git, testing, code review, continuous integration and continuous delivery, and production deployment.
  • Experience designing and operating production data pipelines, data warehouses, and data models at scale.
  • Hands-on experience with cloud platforms, preferably Google Cloud Platform, and technologies such as BigQuery, PostgreSQL, object storage, workflow orchestration, and containerized services.
  • Strong understanding of data security, access control, data partitioning or siloing, audit logging, and managing sensitive or restricted datasets.
  • Experience working with complex, heterogeneous datasets and building systems that make them reliable, discoverable, and usable.
  • Ability to work independently, make sound technical decisions, and drive projects from ambiguous requirements to production systems.
  • Bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Bioinformatics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
Responsibilities
  • Design, build, and maintain scalable data infrastructure for protein engineering campaigns, including ingestion, transformation, validation, storage, and retrieval of large scientific datasets.
  • Develop secure data pipelines for internal and partner-generated data, with attention to access control, data siloing, provenance, auditability, and compliance with data use restrictions.
  • Own core components of the data warehouse and data platform using Python, Google Cloud Platform, PostgreSQL, BigQuery, and related cloud-native technologies.
  • Build systems that transform raw experimental, computational, and partner data into structured, reliable, analysis-ready, and model-ready datasets.
  • Establish best practices for data modeling, metadata management, data quality checks, schema evolution, versioning, and documentation.
  • Collaborate with machine learning engineers, computational biologists, data scientists, and program stakeholders to understand data requirements and translate them into scalable technical systems.
  • Improve engineering quality through system design, code review, testing, continuous integration and continuous delivery, observability, and maintainable development workflows.
  • Contribute to architectural decisions for how data is stored, secured, organized, and used across programs and partnerships.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience with scientific, biological, clinical, genomic, laboratory, or high-throughput experimental data.
  • Experience managing external partner, customer, or restricted-access datasets.
  • Familiarity with data governance, lineage, metadata systems, schema registries, or data catalogs.
  • Experience with research data systems, laboratory information management systems, electronic laboratory notebooks, Benchling, or adjacent scientific platforms.
  • Background working with machine learning, data science, computational biology, or cross-disciplinary technical teams.
  • Interest in learning biology, gene editing, protein design, or machine learning concepts.

Profluent.bio designs custom proteins for genetic medicines using artificial intelligence. Its core offering is bespoke protein solutions tailored to therapeutic needs for pharmaceutical and biotech partners, helping advance treatments for genetic diseases. The product works by applying AI to optimize protein design, effectively decoding the “language of life” to create proteins that extend beyond natural or existing patented options. Partners collaborate on projects, with revenue coming from upfront fees, milestones, and royalties on successful commercialization of therapies that use their proteins. The company differentiates itself by combining AI-driven protein design with a partnership model in the gene editing and synthetic biology space, aiming to deliver more effective and precise treatments while enabling cost-efficient development. The goal is to accelerate genetic medicine by providing optimized proteins that enable new or improved therapies for genetic diseases.

Company Size

51-200

Company Stage

Late Stage VC

Total Funding

$149M

Headquarters

Emeryville, California

Founded

2022

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Eli Lilly's April 28, 2026 deal could deliver $2.25 billion in milestones.
  • Profluent's OpenCRISPR specificity data supports platform credibility with pharma and researchers.
  • Hiring remained active in September 2026, signaling expansion across ML, biology, and informatics.

What critics are saying

  • Lilly owns exclusive rights, limiting Profluent's downstream economics if programs succeed.
  • No human-dosed therapeutic exists yet; execution risk remains concentrated in preclinical translation.
  • Large rivals like Beam, Editas, and Prime edit faster with deeper clinical pipelines.

What makes Profluent unique

  • Profluent's OpenCRISPR-1 launched in 2024 as the first AI-designed open-source gene editor.
  • Ali Madani's team designs recombinases for kilobase-scale DNA editing, beyond standard CRISPR.
  • Profluent raised $106M in November 2025 from Altimeter Capital and Bezos Expeditions.

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Benefits

Health Insurance

Unlimited Paid Time Off

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

2%

1 year growth

-2%

2 year growth

7%
AI Software Services
May 5th, 2026
Unlocking AI innovation in finance medicine and music.

Unlocking AI innovation in finance medicine and music. Published on May 05, 2026 GENETIC MEDICINE REVOLUTION: AI AND BIOTECH JOIN FORCES. In a groundbreaking partnership, Lilly and AI-driven Profluent Bio are teaming up in a deal worth up to $2.25 billion to develop advanced DNA editing tools. Their goal? To create precise treatments for genetic conditions that currently lack effective solutions, using innovative AI models to design enzymes that can target multiple mutations in the genome. This collaboration aims to unlock the "holy grail" of genetic medicine through kilobase-scale DNA editing. This matters because it could transform how AI Software Services treat genetic diseases, offering hope to millions who suffer from conditions deemed untreatable. The tools being developed are likely to be accessible, lowering barriers to entry in a field that has traditionally been expensive and exclusive. Imagine a startup that provides a platform for creators and developers to access these AI-driven genetic editing tools, enabling them to innovate and create personalized therapies. This could attract investors eager to support the next wave of medical breakthroughs!

Pharmaceutical Technology
Apr 29th, 2026
Eli Lilly bets on recombinases in $2.25bn Profluent R&D pact.

Eli Lilly bets on recombinases in $2.25bn Profluent R&D pact. The pair will harness AI to discover and develop recombinases for precise, large-scale gene editing. Eli Lilly is locking down on its rapid expansion strategy with a second deal this week - joining forces with artificial intelligence (AI) biotech, Profluent, to develop recombinases for large-scale gene editing. The deal, which will see Lilly hand over an undisclosed upfront payment and funding for Profluent's R&D efforts, could deem the biotech eligible for $2.25bn in development and commercial milestones. Profluent will also see tiered royalties on net sales if any of the developed recombinases were to make it to market. Through this partnership, Lilly and Profluent will work across multiple programmes, which will focus on developing and commercialising site-specific recombinases for diseases with "severe unmet needs". To achieve this, Profluent will take an AI-driven approach - using the technology to create and optimise custom recombinases targeting exact locations in the genome to enable large-scale, precise DNA editing. Under the deal's terms, Lilly will also gain the exclusive rights to take selected recombinases through both early and clinical development to commercialisation. According to Profluent, altering DNA on a kilobase scale could help address the variation in mutations often seen across patients with genetic diseases - potentially allowing more patients in a heterogeneous population to gain benefit compared with the one-size-fits-all approach taken by standard knock-out and base editing methods. In a statement, Profluent's co-founder and CEO, Ali Madani, noted that kilobase-scale DNA editing is the "holy grail in genetic medicine," and AI is the only way to truly unlock the potential of designer recombinases for any location in the genome. Lilly forges on with dealmaking spree. Lilly's partnership with Profluent is not the big pharma's first foray into the world of recombinases, as the company previously forged a $1.12bn collaboration with German biotech, Seamless Therapeutics, to develop recombinase-based therapies for hearing loss in January 2026. The Indiana-based pharma, alongside Johnson & Johnson, also poured funds into an $85m financing raised by in vivo gene editing startup, Stylus Medicine - supporting the development of its cancer therapies. Alongside its activity in the recombinase space, Lilly has been on somewhat of a dealmaking spree over the first months of 2026, having handed over $21bn to acquire six biotechs across operating areas like oncology, immunology and cardiovascular diseases. Most recently, the pharma company bought Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor specialist, Ajax Therapeutics, for $2.3bn - potentially expanding its presence in the blood cancer market. Lilly's deal-heavy strategy is similarly mirrored across the pharmaceutical space, as companies look to restock their pipelines amid the looming patent expiries facing their portfolios. Give your business an edge with its leading industry insights.

Tech in Asia
Apr 29th, 2026
Eli Lilly signs $2.3B AI gene-editing deal with Profluent to develop DNA medicines

Eli Lilly has signed a deal worth up to $2.25 billion with Profluent, an AI biotech startup, to develop DNA-editing medicines using AI-designed proteins called recombinases. The partnership gives Lilly exclusive rights to any resulting medicines, though upfront fees and disease targets were not disclosed. The collaboration focuses on inserting kilobase-scale DNA sequences into specific genome locations, aiming to surpass CRISPR/Cas9's capabilities. Profluent CEO Ali Madani described this as the "holy grail" of genetic medicine. The deal extends Lilly's AI drug discovery push, following a $1.12 billion agreement with Seamless Therapeutics in January. Profluent also released OpenCRISPR-1, an open-source AI-generated gene editor that matched SpCas9's efficiency whilst reducing unintended edits by 95% in human cell tests.

Business Wire
Nov 19th, 2025
Profluent Raises $106M to Scale Frontier AI Models for Programmable Biology

Profluent, a leader in frontier AI for protein design, today announced a $106 million financing co-led by Altimeter Capital and Bezos Expeditions, with parti...

Bionews, Inc.
Nov 19th, 2025
Partners to design AI-based gene editing therapies for Rett

Partners to design ai-based gene editing therapies for Rett. The Rett Syndrome Research Trust (RSRT) is teaming up with Profluent Bio to use artificial intelligence (AI) to design personalized gene-editing therapies for Rett syndrome. Profluent will leverage its AI tools to engineer molecules that can correct mutations in the MECP2 gene, the most frequent cause of Rett syndrome. RSRT has awarded Profluent $1 million to fund the partnership. "Our AI is built to navigate a vast design space and find solutions that are out of reach with manual protein engineering methods, resulting in personalized mutation-specific genomic medicines that are an ideal match for each Rett patient," Peter Cameron, PhD, Profluent's senior vice president of gene editing and translation, said in a company press release. "Together with RSRT, we're excited to turn progress in the lab into impact for patients." Rett syndrome is caused mainly by mutations in the MECP2 gene, resulting in less production of a working protein with the same name that plays an important role in brain development and communication between brain cells. Gene editing tools, such as CRISPR/Cas9, are used in research and clinical settings to remove, add, or modify pieces of DNA with the goal of treating genetic diseases. Focusing on mutation. Base editing uses modified versions of the CRISPR system to make precise changes to a single building block (nucleotide) in the MECP2 gene. Profluent said its AI models will be used to develop base editors that target mutations often found in Rett syndrome patients. Profluent will initially focus on the T158M mutation, which changes the amino acid sequence in the MeCP2 protein from threonine to methionine. Amino acids are the proteins' building blocks. The new editors will fit inside a harmless adeno-associated virus (AAV) and make room for systems that prevent them from accidentally causing edits in the brain beyond the intended one. "This collaboration is about people first - Rett families are trusting us with a challenge that affects them 24/7," said Hilary Eaton, PhD, chief business officer at Profluent. "Profluent is committed to using AI as the equalizer and democratizing the field of gene editing; whether a patient has a rare or common disease, they deserve access to safe, high-quality treatments." The company presented data on Protein2PAM, an AI, deep learning model capable of engineering Cas proteins that could be used to develop customized base editors for Rett, at the Rett Syndrome Genetic Medicines Summit, held in September in Boston. "Families in our community face seizures, loss of speech, and profound disability," said Monica Coenraads, CEO of RSRT. "They are counting on us to push the science forward. We believe Profluent's frontier AI can accelerate the development of custom editing solutions for our patients with serious unmet medical need." Last year, RSRT launched a program, Roadmap to Cures, aimed at raising $40 million to bring three genetic medicines to clinical trials by 2028. Andrea Lobo, PhD Andrea Lobo holds a PhD in cell biology/neurosciences from the University of Coimbra-Portugal, where she studied stroke biology. As a research scientist for 19 years, Andrea participated in academic projects in multiple research fields, from stroke, gene regulation, cancer, and rare diseases. She has authored multiple research papers in peer-reviewed journals.