Who we are:

Calico is a research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan, and to devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives. Executing on this mission will require an unprecedented level of interdisciplinary effort and a long-term focus for which funding is already in place.

Position Description:

Great software engineering is increasingly crucial to biology. We are in the midst of an explosion of biological and medical data that will transform our understanding of biology and disease. But the tools to store, process, visualize, explore, and analyze these data are often primitive—and in some cases don’t yet exist. Calico is seeking an exceptional full-stack engineer to join our computing group and be a part of changing that story.

To excel in this role, you will exercise your skills as a self-starting generalist who leans towards the front-end of modern software development. We go where the science takes us, working in tight-knit collaborations with researchers, data scientists, and others to develop infrastructure and applications that directly impact our ability to ask and answer questions about the biology of aging.

What you’ll do:

• Write, review, and maintain applications primarily written in JavaScript and Python that power cutting-edge scientific analyses.
• Work directly with Calico scientists to identify needs and opportunities, and transform those findings into cutting-edge apps for research and development.
• Set engineering vision and drive both independent and collaborative software projects end-to-end.
• Contribute to a range of projects, from one-off prototypes to long-term, complex software projects actively used by scientists.
• Create rich user interfaces and architect backends to support scientific and data analysis workflows.
• Build out core infrastructure, tooling, and software development processes.

Position requirements:

• 5+ years of experience developing and deploying modern web applications with JavaScript or Python, using front-end frameworks like React or Angular2.
• 3+ years of experience designing and building data visualizations in modern web applications, using libraries like d3.js.
• Fluent knowledge of JavaScript (ES6) and front-end libraries, as well as HTML5 and CSS3.
• Fluent knowledge of Python and experience building Python-based back-end systems.
• Strong knowledge of SQL, databases, and data structures and storage.
• 3+ years of experience designing RESTful or GraphQL APIs for modern web applications.
• Firm grasp on software testing and test-driven development.
• Demonstrated success in owning projects end-to-end, including working with non-technical stakeholders to set priorities, define requirements, and seek feedback.

Nice to have:

• 7+ years of full-stack web development experience.
• Experience with biology or life science tools, datasets, and workflows.
• Expert knowledge of React and Redux.
• Expert knowledge of data visualization tools and methods, including related technologies like WebGL.
• Experience building real-world machine learning models and applications.
• Experience shipping software that uses Django, Docker, Flask, GraphQL, or Airflow.
• Experience deploying applications to the cloud with Google Cloud Platform or similar cloud services.

Some projects you may contribute to:

• Data visualization & visual analytics tools—apps to help scientists explore, understand, and publish diverse, complex, and multidimensional data.
• Automation—software to set up, monitor, and browse experiments that make use of custom high-throughput instrumentation, and developing user interfaces to control automation hardware.
• Machine learning tools—applications for collecting and managing training data, experimental runs, and model versioning.
• Data platform—a modern, React (front-end) and Python (back-end) application that our scientists use to manage and process experimental data.