Engineering Manager, Customer Engineering
Over the coming years, biotech will fundamentally rewrite the way we live. Gene editing and cell therapy are dramatically changing how we treat cancer and other major illnesses. Biofuels and biomaterials are transforming the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, and the makeup of everyday objects. Crop science and synthetic biology are producing sustainable and ethical food. Benchling’s mission is to accelerate the research that propels us towards this reality, and magnify its impact, through modern software.
Every day, scientists around the world use Benchling’s applications, platform, & analytics in their efforts to solve humanity's most pressing problems. For these scientists, Benchling is the central technology they use to conduct their research. Our customers include pharmaceutical giants, leading biotechs, and the world's most renowned research institutes. Benchling is at the heart of 300+ enterprises, 1000+ institutions, and 225,000+ scientists who actively use the Benchling platform to do their research.
From driving robots that perform thousands of experiments simultaneously to automatically syncing high-throughput data from external machines and systems into Benchling, the Customer Engineering team helps discover and capture new use cases and ways of increasing scientific productivity into our platform. We are part of the Platform and Infrastructure team in Benchling’s core Engineering, Product, and Design organization. We work with Benchling’s lead customers to understand and build new ways of extending and integrating our software that advance the state of the art. Check out our blog post describing use cases of extensions and integrations on the Benchling Platform!
As the manager of the Customer Engineering team, you will be leading engineering on development of customer solutions and partnering closely with the Platform and Infrastructure teams to inform improvements to the Benchling Developer Platform and design scalable systems to support a rapidly growing customer base. You will also work closely with the Technical Solutions Consulting and Customer Experience teams to ensure the success of our enterprise customers on Benchling. A great leader for this team will understand how to balance complex customer needs and priorities, and be able to work effectively with the rest of the engineering and product organization to build the right customer solutions.
WHAT YOU WILL DO
- Build and manage a team of full-stack engineers working on platform integration, extension, and development.
- Work actively with customer-facing teams (i.e. sales, technical solutions consulting, customer success) to set expectations with customers on scope and timelines, and help guide customers in the scoping and development process.
- Run a managed services infrastructure function to host and manage solutions built on the Benchling platform.
- Interface directly with customers to analyze and document project requirements, develop and deliver custom engineering projects, communicate project status, and roll these projects into production status.
- Develop an elastic staffing bench through third-party staff augmentation.
- Engage with third-party developers to help seed the developer ecosystem in support of our customers needing additional integration services.
- Make Benchling a great place to work by actively supporting career development, growth, and mentoring of individuals; and by fostering a fun and inclusive team where everyone feels welcome.
ABOUT YOU
- 5+ years of managing an engineering team, with a track record of building and managing high-performing teams with a culture of quality and continuous improvement; plus a minimum of five years as individual contributor engineer in software development.
- Experience working with customers in an enterprise context (e.g. driving customer conversations around technical development and project status, triaging incoming asks or requests from customers, and providing external-facing documentation and materials for custom engineering projects) and working across multiple departments internally.
- Experience working with and delivering to enterprise IT teams as a customer.
- Experience managing software engineers as an extension of an internal engineering team without compromise towards talent, culture, and code quality.
- A passion and knack for identifying new core products and abstractions through multiple customer engagements.
- Very comfortable and passionate about working with sales and customers.
- Comfortable navigating and authoring SOWs.
- Experience managing a team of 10+ engineers in the past, with
- At least one role managing a team with heavy enterprise customer-facing project timelines & deliverables.
- At least one role managing a core product engineering team
- Experience running & supporting infrastructure and/or backend web services in a 24/7/365 model
- Required technical skills
- Experience designing complex system architectures
- BS in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience
The following experience is a plus:
- Working manager-level understanding of, or previous hands-on experience with, a service-oriented architecture, general AWS fundamentals, API-based design and development
- Working manager-level understanding of, or previous hands-on experience with, a modern web development stack (e.g. one of Python, Ruby, Java, Go on the backend; some of Typescript, React, GraphQL, on the front end)
- Experience working in both small organizations (sub 30 engineering team) and larger organizations (150+ engineers). This will allow them to effectively balance moving fast with thinking about long-term consequences, and draw on past experiences to make better decisions.
OUR VALUES
- Empower through information. We explain the “why” behind every decision, unless there are highly sensitive circumstances. We're honest about how we're doing, especially in difficult times. We believe that sharing information builds trust and enables better decision-making.
- Rely on tenacity. Hard work is one of the greatest factors to determine success and is fully under our control. We must make the most of every day by bringing the highest level of determination. Dreaming big is not enough.
- Raise the bar. Pushing ourselves and others to improve will be uncomfortable and at times result in failure. However, it's critical to our success. We're dedicated to creating a place where everyone feels challenged to improve.
- Build a lever. We choose to build tools and infrastructure that will help others make world-changing innovations. There's less glory in it, but in the words of Archimedes, "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
PERKS AND BENEFITS
- Work with a talented yet humble team
- Competitive compensation & equity package
- 401k
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- Monthly health & wellness stipend
- Weekly virtual social events, and annual company retreats
- *$1,000 work-from-home stipend
In following best practices and safety protocols, all Benchling employees are expected to work remotely until we are further advised that it is safe for employees to resume work in their respective office locations.
*To support remote work conditions, Benchling provides each employee a one-time stipend of $1,000 upon commencing employment, and additional discounted employee purchase plans for home-office equipment.
We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.