Software Engineer App Foundations; Seniority

We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era. When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done.

Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world s top 50 biopharma.

We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it s core to how we work, and we re committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day-to-day. As part of our interview process, you ll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role.

Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today.

The App Foundations group — comprised of our Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams — builds the surfaces and systems at the heart of the Benchling experience. On one side, that s how scientists capture their work every day — the Notebook and the structured data-input tables where experimental data becomes clean, structured, and analyzable. On the other, it s the enterprise lifecycle capabilities that make that data trustworthy at scale: audit trails, review and approval, exports, and backups.

These are the features that show up in FDA submissions and GxP-regulated workflows, and they re what lets Benchling s largest customers — internationally recognizable names developing some of the world s most innovative treatments — operate with confidence in regulated environments.

As a Software Engineer at the High Seniority level, you will be the senior engineering authority for the Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams — owning horizontally impactful systems while directly enabling the product features enterprise customers depend on. This role sits squarely at the intersection of platform and product work, and demands both deep technical expertise and strong product sense.

You will also serve as an IC leader across the broader Applications division, helping set engineering direction that reaches well beyond any single team.

This role reports to the Head of Engineering for Applications and works day-to-day as the senior IC anchor for the Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams.

• Serve as the senior technical authority for the Lab Notebook and Enterprise Lifecycle teams, driving the design and development of the Notebook, structured data-input, and enterprise lifecycle systems that anchor the Benchling product.
• Independently architect and implement solutions to complex, open-ended problems — from system architecture to backend models and APIs to rich frontend UI — in areas such as comprehensive audit coverage, review and approval flows, scalable export systems, backups, and document lifecycle management.
• Lead large, multi-quarter initiatives: break down ambiguous requirements into concrete technical plans and iterative delivery milestones, designing for scale and reliability across a growing enterprise customer base.
• Use technical decision-making as a tool of engineering strategy — knowing when to leverage existing platform capabilities, when to take on technical debt deliberately, and when to preserve optionality for the long term.
• Act as a force multiplier across the Applications division: help set engineering direction, raise standards for quality and architecture, and influence technical choices beyond your immediate teams.
• Provide technical leadership through code review, architectural guidance, and mentorship of engineers across all experience levels.
• Partner closely with product management, design, and…