Software Engineer, Developer Enablement

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.

As a Software Engineer on the Developer Enablement team, you’ll play a pivotal role in building the platform that enables our ecosystem of scientific applications. You won’t just write code, you’ll help shape how developers, partners, and scientists interact with Benchling’s products, allowing them to create tools that directly support groundbreaking research. Your work will impact the way science gets done, driving innovation and enabling seamless integration of third-party solutions across the platform.

The team is working on a wide range of early- and mid-stage initiatives—including developer APIs, event delivery, AI-powered agents, and new platform infrastructure designed to support a growing ecosystem of scientific applications. Because of the diversity of our work, engineers have the flexibility to take on projects that align with both business needs and their own interests and skills. This role was envisioned as a “Developer Platform Engineer,” reflecting the breadth of opportunities to contribute across our developer-facing systems.

This is a hands-on, high-impact role where your contributions will be visible across the company and to our scientific users worldwide. You’ll collaborate with product managers, designers, and engineers, tackling complex challenges while growing your expertise in platform development and life sciences. 

• Take ownership of projects from ideation to delivery, including prototyping, building, and scaling new software features.

• Design and implement robust APIs, services, and interfaces that integrate seamlessly with our growing ecosystem.

• Partner with cross-functional teams to translate user needs into scalable, elegant software solutions.

• Influence the direction of our platform by bringing creative solutions and new ideas to the table.

Developer Interfaces & Platform APIs

• Design, build, and maintain external developer-facing APIs and SDKs that power extensibility in Benchling’s platform.

• Contribute to evolving and scaling our REST and GraphQL APIs, ensuring consistency, performance, and usability for external and internal developers.

• Build and maintain delivery systems for real-time scientific data

Bonus: AI Agents & Model Context Protocol (MCP)

• Contribute to the development of APIs and interfaces that support AI-driven agents like Benchling’s Deep Research Agent and Data Entry Agent.

• Support the development of our Benchling MCP to enable AI agents to interact safely with Benchling’s data and APIs.

• Collaborate with our AI infra / agents teams to support the agentic ecosystem.

Bonus: APIs for ingesting/exporting large amounts of data

• Architect and implement high-throughput APIs designed specifically for bulk data ingestion and export, capable of handling millions of records daily with minimal latency.

• Design scalable API specifications (REST or gRPC) that support complex filtering, sparse fieldsets, and cursor-based pagination to efficiently manage large payloads.

Check out our engineering blog for some examples of past work across Benchling.

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience

• Strong coding skills and engineering fundamentals – able to turn product requirements into well-architected, maintainable, and tested code

• Experience building scalable, reliable systems with attention to performance and user impact

• Leadership in engineering practices – drives and upholds high standards in testing, code quality, reviews, version control, and team development workflows

• Proven ability to work across teams – partnering with product, design, and platform groups to ship cohesive solutions

• Strategic problem solving – tackles complex, ambiguous technical challenges with a focus on long-term impact, scalability, and user value

• Comfortable pushing back thoughtfully – advocate for technical solutions that improve quality, scalability, and maintainability

• Experience mentoring others and contributing to team growth – through onboarding, pairing, and process improvement

• Clear and effective communicator, especially in cross-functional settings

• Have a keen interest in delving deeper into building Enterprise SaaS in the life sciences industry. While prior knowledge isn’t a prerequisite, an enthusiasm to learn certainly is!

We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday).

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Benchling welcomes everyone.

We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences.
We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t 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.