Staff/Principal Software Engineer - Developer Experience (Waltham)

About Dash Bio

Our Mission: Dash accelerates drug development. By fusing advanced automation‑native lab workflows and integrated software into a unified platform, we provide the biopharma industry with the high‑velocity, high‑quality, data‑driven development solutions required to get life‑saving therapies to patients faster. Dash seeks to continuously improve industry KPIs and materially reduce the time and cost to bring a drug to market.

Company Summary: We are building the infrastructure for modern drug development. We are moving beyond the manual, fragmented processes of traditional service providers by taking a technology‑first approach to bioanalysis. Our platform is tech‑enabled, automated, and GLP‑compliant with the goal to industrialize the scientific workflows that act as bottlenecks in the industry. We deliver next‑generation preclinical and clinical bioanalysis results with unprecedented speed and precision.

We are a team of builders operating at the intersection of biology, hardware, and code. This is an environment for scientists and engineers who are tired of the status quo and are ready to apply their skills to solve hard problems at scale. We don't just run assays, we architect the systems that will define the future of drug development.

We are a place where employees are stretched to do the best work of their career. We are looking for engineers, scientists, and biotechnicians who want to make an impact on the world and leverage their skills in an innovative way.

About the job

Dash's engineering team is growing rapidly as we expand our digital footprint from internal automation platforms to robust, customer‑facing applications. We are seeking a Principal Developer Experience (DevEx) Engineer to evolve our internal developer platform, build tools that empower the broader engineering team, and contribute directly to feature development as a core software engineer.

In this role, you will streamline the software development lifecycle by obsessing over the end‑to‑end developer experience, diving into dev container optimizations, task runners, agent integrations, test automation, and CI/CD pipelines. You will directly benefit from these improvements yourself as an owner and builder of core platform components. Alongside improving developer velocity, you will be responsible for the reliability, scalability, and security of our cloud environments. You will utilize Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tailored for serverless deployments, ensuring our systems continue to meet the strict compliance requirements of the life sciences industry.

Key Responsibilities

• Application Engineering: Actively contribute to our core application codebase. You will drive feature development and maintain core system components.
• Developer Tooling: Design, build, and maintain internal applications, tools, CLIs, and self‑service portals to support software engineers. Optimize local development environments to mirror production.
• Cloud Architecture: Lead the architectural design and implementation of our serverless AWS infrastructure, ensuring high availability, scalability, and performance for both internal and external customer‑facing applications.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Architect and maintain infrastructure using modern IaC tools (e.g., Terraform and Pulumi) to ensure reproducible and automated environment provisioning.
• CI/CD & Developer Productivity: Design, build, and optimize CI/CD pipelines to streamline deployment processes, allowing our full‑stack and UI/UX engineers to ship code rapidly and safely.
• Security & Compliance: Integrate security best practices directly into the development lifecycle. Establish automated dependency management and package update strategies to proactively patch vulnerabilities. Work closely with engineering leadership to ensure infrastructure complies with industry regulations (GLP, 21 CFR Part 11, etc).
• Observability & Reliability: Implement comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerting systems (e.g., Datadog, CloudWatch) to proactively identify bottlenecks and ensure system uptime.
• Technical Leadership: Serve as the bridge between application development and platform operations. Mentor software engineers on system architecture, code deployment, and operational best practices.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
• Experience: 8+ years of experience in Software Engineering, with a strong recent focus on Developer Experience, Core Architecture, or Platform Engineering at a Principal or Lead level.
• Coding/Scripting: Expert‑level proficiency in TypeScript and modern application development (Node.js, React, or similar ecosystems).
• DevEx Focus: Proven experience building internal developer platforms, optimizing local development (e.g., Docker), and improving cycle times.
• Cloud Expertise: Deep, hands‑on administrative and architectural experience with AWS (e.g., EC2, Lambda, S3, RDS, VPC, IAM).
• Automation & IaC: Mastery of Infrastructure as Code tools (Terraform preferred) and configuration management.
• Pipeline Management: Strong experience with modern CI/CD platforms (e.g., GitHub Actions).
• Regulated Environments: Previous experience operating cloud infrastructure in a regulated, secure environment (Life Sciences, Healthcare, or FinTech) is highly desirable.
• Problem‑Solving: Exceptional ability to troubleshoot complex, distributed systems.

Benefits

Health Insurance

Vision Insurance

401(k) Matching

Paid Time Off (PTO)

Paid Holidays

Preferred Skills

• ci/cd
• aws
• observability

What We Offer

• Opportunity to work at the forefront of bioanalytical innovation.
• Collaborative and inclusive company culture.
• Competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package.
• Direct access to industry veterans and a supportive environment for professional growth.