Location: San Francisco, US
Travel: Travel to our Glasgow HQ
The Role We are seeking a Lead Full Stack Software Engineer / Engineering Manager to lead the software effort at our US site - setting technical direction and growing the team that builds the platform behind Chemify's robotic synthesis systems. This is a hands-on leadership role: you will stay close to the code, but your biggest impact comes through the people you hire, grow, and unblock, and the standards you put in place.
What sets this role apart is timing: as one of the founding engineering leaders in San Francisco, you will help stand up the team as our second site comes online - shaping its culture from the start.
If leading a team building real-world platform software sounds like the right shape of job for you, we'd love to welcome you to our team.
Key Responsibilities - Lead and grow a team of full-stack engineers - hiring, mentoring, performance, and career development.
- Set technical direction and architecture for the platform software in partnership with peers in Glasgow.
- Stay hands-on: review designs and code, and contribute to the hardest problems.
- Own delivery - planning, prioritisation, and execution - and be accountable for outcomes.
- Partner with firmware, hardware, manufacturing, chemistry, and product to deliver end to end.
About You
You are a technical leader who multiplies the people around you. You have shipped complex systems yourself, and you have learned that the highest-leverage thing you can do is build a team that ships even more. You are comfortable with the ambiguity of a scaling company and a new site.
We expect you to bring: - 8+ years in software engineering, including experience leading and growing teams.
- Deep full-stack expertise ([Python/C/C++) and strong architectural judgement.
- A proven ability to ship complex systems in production and to raise a team's bar.
- Strong people-leadership instincts - you develop engineers and create an environment where they do their best work.
- Comfort operating with autonomy and ambiguity in a scaling deep-tech company.
Beneficial Skills - Experience with robotics, hardware-in-the-loop, real-time, or instrument-control systems.
- Background in lab automation, manufacturing software, or scientific computing.
- Experience standing up or scaling a new engineering team or site.
