Software Engineer, Schemas & Object Framework

As a software engineer on the Schemas and Object Framework team, you will design, build, and operate platform systems that are fundamental to how Benchling models complex science. Not only will your work enable Benchling to scale its product offerings and accelerate scientific discovery for our customers by providing a cohesive and extensible data modeling foundation, but you will also have the opportunity to help shape technical strategy and establish best practices for Benchling product and platform teams.

The richness and variety of our customers’ work means that Benchling cannot provide out-of-the-box support for all the concepts in biotech. So, the Schemas system enables our internal application teams to introduce new “schema types,” which are natively integrated with our platform. Our customers can then extend and customize these schema types to represent their unique science. As an engineer on the Schemas team, you will own the evolution of these customizable schemas, ensuring optimal handling of data “at rest” and shaping the data within Schemas to maintain data integrity and optimize the performance of the datastore that backs all data records in the Benchling Data Platform.

This team also owns the Object Framework which enables Benchling’s internal platform to be consistent by default by providing both a source of truth for the shape of Benchling objects and also internal APIs for accessing them. Team members regularly define best practices for other platform and product teams to ensure modeling consistency, as well as define interfaces to adjacent systems that persist data and generate change events. 

• Lead high-impact projects from design through to deployment and operation.
• Work closely with product managers, designers, and other engineers across Platform and Applications teams to translate business needs into effective solutions.
• Collaborate with technical leaders and teammates to contribute to team growth, drive improvements in engineering processes and tools, and foster a culture of excellence.
• Improve the maintainability, consistency, scalability, and developer experience of high-impact internal data modeling APIs.

• You have 5+ years of experience in a fulltime software engineering role. Ideally in SaaS with platform development experience.
• Strong problem-solving skills with a proven ability to iterate on feedback and deliver high-impact solutions.
• Proficiency in backend development, API design, data management. Experience in Web Application development is highly desirable.
• Experience leading & delivering projects from start to finish, independently or as a part of a larger team.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and experience working in a collaborative, cross-functional environment. Willing to work out of our SF office 3 days a week.
• Enthusiasm for diving into complex technical challenges and a keen interest in the life sciences domain, with a willingness to learn and adapt.

Check out our engineering blog for some examples of past work throughout Benchling. Here are some other examples of recent and future projects for the Schemas and Object Framework team:

• Fieldsets: The team recently released “Fieldsets” which are a new Schemas feature that lets customers define a common set of structural metadata (e.g. prefixes, constraints, fields) that can be applied to one or more schemas - not only saving them time but also increasing data integrity. 
• Domain Graph Versioning: A key element of the Object Framework is the “Domain Graph” which is the source of truth for the domain model of Benchling. Another team is building a Change Data Capture (CDC) system that will represent changes with the Domain Graph representation of the data. To make that work, we needed to let the CDC system subscribe to changes in the Domain Graph itself so it can update how to represent those models.
• Performance improvements: For other internal systems to use the Domain Graph as their source of truth for data, they use a persistence agnostic internal API that we also own that we call Data Connectors. We shipped a project recently that finds seams between that API and other systems in Benchling and prevents over-fetching by introducing new tooling that automatically translates queries between, e.g. an internal GraphQL API and Data Connectors. 

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).

Benchling takes a market-based approach to pay.  The candidate's starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and work location. For this role the base salary range is $165,113 to $223,388

To help you determine which zone applies to your location, please see this resource. If you have questions regarding a specific location's zone designation, please contact a recruiter for additional information.

• Competitive total rewards package
• Broad range of medical, dental, and vision plans for employees and their dependents
• Fertility healthcare and family-forming benefits
• Four months of fully paid parental leave
• 401(k) + Employer Match
• Commuter benefits for in-office employees and a generous home office set up stipend for remote employees
• Mental health benefits, including therapy and coaching, for employees and their dependents
• Monthly Wellness stipend
• Learning and development stipend
• Generous and flexible vacation
• Company-wide Winter holiday shutdown
• Sabbaticals for 5-year and 10-year anniversaries

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