We design, build, and test organisms to address fundamental challenges the world is facing today. Ginkgo bioengineers use our foundry—a custom-built, centralized set of robotic lab equipment and software—to build the organisms that solve these challenges by making critical natural products, pharmaceuticals, biofuels, and more. Great software engineering is crucial for us to build and run foundry services and generate and organize the data needed to create biological insights. We are looking for an expert leader to helm our software engineering strategy and deliver solutions for our scientific research and operations teams.

Your job is to deliver a software platform to make biology easier to engineer.

You will own the overall engineering strategy to ensure our software infrastructure and products continue to scale while meeting Ginkgo’s evolving needs. You will work with Product leadership and internal customers to identify the most impactful ways to leverage software development capabilities to build an industry-leading bioengineering platform and deliver on a wide variety of programs in fields ranging from healthcare to agriculture to industrial manufacturing. Your team will own the development of new software as well as the integration of commercial off-the-shelf software into our overall ecosystem.

To succeed in this role you need a working knowledge of delivering scalable software under evolving conditions, a keen sense of buy vs build tradeoffs, experience working at the intersection of biology and technology or at least a deep interest in the subject, and be skilled at balancing priorities across multiple initiatives and stakeholders. You will thrive if you are a self-starter motivated to bring organism engineering to new heights

RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic Leadership:

• Define, maintain, communicate, and execute Ginkgo’s Software Engineering strategy and roadmap.
• Define and implement processes and metrics (OKRs) to ensure consistent, high quality delivery of impactful software solutions.
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence.
• Head the development and implementation of scalable, robust software solutions that enhance our program offerings.
• Drive the buy versus build strategy for software

Team Management & Development:

• Build and mentor a high-performing team of software engineers
• Oversee recruitment, training, and professional development of engineering staff.
• Manage the budget and resources of the software engineering function, creating room for innovation.
• Implement best practices in software engineering and ensure adherence to quality standards.
• Champion and implement continuous process improvements to enhance productivity.

Product/Program Development & Innovation:

• Drive the product development lifecycle, from concept to deployment and iteration.
• Meet strict timeline needs of existing biological programs while integrating those requirements into a scalable, reusable platform.
• Incorporate feedback from internal and external stakeholders to continuously improve our programs.
• Stay abreast of the latest trends in software engineering, integrating new technologies and methodologies including AI as appropriate.

• Address technical challenges and lead problem-solving efforts in a fast-paced environment.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Build strong interdepartmental relationships and communications mechanisms that support informed, timely, and cohesive action in pursuit of our purpose. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to innovate and deliver high-quality programs.
• Collaborate closely with legal, compliance, and IT security teams to stay abreast of evolving regulations and lead the development and implementation of data security and privacy strategies across all software engineering efforts.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

• Typically 15+ YOE plus PhD (or equivalent experience with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science or related field), including scaling up teams and coaching/developing leaders. 
• Demonstrated ability to lead the development of intricate software systems using modern cloud-based technologies
• Demonstrated ability to work closely with stakeholders to solve complex problems
• Demonstrated ability to clearly articulate and execute software engineering strategies
• Deployment of Agile, DevOps, and SRE practices across multiple teams
• Demonstrated use of metrics to drive continuous improvement
• Superb ability to communicate and collaborate in an interdisciplinary environment
• 10 years of management experience
• Excitement to work with the best scientists and engineers to develop new data tools to solve never-before-seen scientific challenges

PREFERRED CAPABILITIES AND EXPERIENCE

• • A B.S. or higher degree in molecular biology or a related field
  • Industry experience with biotechnology, synthetic biology or related field