The Opportunity

To enable that mission, we need a software layer that ties together the scientific, automation, and machine learning platforms - that's our Lab Platform: a harness for science, built as an agentic workflow system that lets scientists drive the lab through an agent. Our bar is that everything in the lab should be agentically accessible (any action a scientist can take, an agent can take), agentically legible (agents understand what the data means in insitro's context, not just how to fetch it), and humanly verifiable (a scientist can always check what an agent did and why). This is real robotics, workflow automation, and applied agent tooling - and your users are in the building with you.

You'll work across the stack - front end, backend, and the integrations that reach into instruments, Benchling, and agent runtimes - partnering closely with our machine learning, automation, and biology teams. Based in South San Francisco, this role reports directly to Senior Manager, Software Engineering and offers an in-person hybrid schedule of three days per week. We'll bring you up to speed in the domain of drug development and back your ideas with real trust and mentorship along the way.

Responsibilities

Full-Stack Ownership

• Ship Across the Stack: Build the React and TypeScript frontends scientists use every day, the Python services behind them, and integrations that reach instruments, Benchling, and agent runtimes
• Own It End to End: Take a feature from the first conversation with a scientist through the data model and UI to the alert that fires when it breaks
• Do the Normal SWE Things: Write code, review design docs, talk to users, and do code reviews that actually make the codebase better

Agentic Tooling & Experimentation

• Chase User Appreciation: Ship things that make scientists say "OMG, this is amazing, thank you so much."
• Figure Out What's Actually Useful: Test agentic tooling ideas through prototypes, real users, and short iterative loops rather than betting on theory
• Move the Needle: Contribute work that meaningfully advances insitro's mission and the pace of drug development

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Go Watch the Work: Spend time in the lab observing the workflow before you change it
• Partner Broadly: Collaborate closely with machine learning, automation, and biology teams to build tools people actually use
• Keep Humans in the Loop: Design for provenance and verifiability, so a scientist can always check what an agent did and why

About You

Experience & Qualifications

• Tenure: 2-4+ years of experience as a professional software engineer
• Engineering Fundamentals: Working knowledge of AWS or GCP, relational databases, and standard practices like version control and code review

Core Competencies

• Product Instinct: You think like a product person - you want to know who the user is, what they're actually trying to do, and you have opinions about what to build
• Curious About the Science: You don't need a biology background, but you want to learn the domain rather than treat it as someone else's problem
• Comfortable in the Gray Area: You can reason clearly about the tradeoffs between quality and speed
• Fits the Team: You're up for writing design docs, having opinions in code review, and yes, goofing around on Slack.

Preferred Qualifications

• Domain Experience: Experience with LIMS, lab automation, or another life sciences domain
• Agent/LLM Experience: Experience building with LLMs or agent frameworks - tool and skill design, evaluation, or getting a model to behave reliably against real systems
• Stack Familiarity: Experience with Django, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, React, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Docker, or AWS

Compensation & Benefits at insitro

Our target starting salary for successful US-based applicants for this role is $111,000 - $140,000. To determine starting pay, we consider multiple job-related factors including a candidate's skills, education and experience, market demand, business needs, and internal parity. We may also adjust this range in the future based on market data.

This role is eligible for participation in our Annual Performance Bonus Plan (based on company targets by role level and annual company performance) and our Equity Incentive Plan, subject to the terms of those plans and associated policies.

In addition, insitro also provides our employees:

• 401(k) plan with employer matching for contributions
• Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage as well as mental health and well-being support
• Open, flexible vacation policy
• Paid parental leave of at least 16 weeks to support parents who give birth, and 10 weeks for a new parent (inclusive of birth, adoption, fostering, etc)
• Quarterly budget for books and online courses for self-development
• New hire stipend for home office setup
• Monthly cell phone & internet stipend
• Access to free onsite baristas and daily lunch for employees who are either onsite or hybrid
• Access to a free commuter bus network that provides transport to and from our South San Francisco HQ from locations all around the Bay Area

#LI-Hybrid

Please be aware of recruitment scams: we never request payments, all recruitment communications are from @insitro.com, and if in doubt, contact us at [email protected].