Staff Product Owner

Staff Product Owner

At Element Biosciences, we are passionate about our mission to empower the scientific community with more freedom and flexibility to accelerate our collective impact on humanity. We have built a highly efficient product-driven organization where employees can learn, grow, and thrive in a challenging but encouraging environment. We are committed to scientific integrity, collegiality, honesty, objectivity, and openness.

We're hiring a Staff Product Owner to lead software development for our multi-omic data generation instruments. You'll own the product surface where instrumentation, cloud analytics, bioinformatics, and user workflows converge. This is a senior individual contributor role and you won't manage direct reports, but you will set direction across multiple scrum teams and act as the connective tissue between bioinformatics, hardware, chemistry, cloud, and instrument control. You should be comfortable getting hands-on prototyping, writing scripts, running test suites; not just writing tickets. This role will report to our Associate Director, Software Product and will be a San Diego based role.

If you possess the following and want to make a meaningful impact, we invite you to explore this role.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Own and prioritize backlogs across multiple scrum teams; translate company initiatives into epics, user stories, and clear acceptance criteria
• Define and ship product capabilities spanning instrument control, cloud analytics, ML pipelines, and emerging LLM/agent-based user workflows
• Partner with bioinformatics, cloud, and instrument software teams to design scalable data pipelines, analysis workflows, and control interfaces
• Be the system SME: understand the architecture and interfaces well enough to make sound trade-off calls and unblock teams technically, not just procedurally
• Prototype, write scripts, and run test suites to validate ideas, reproduce issues, and pressure-test specs before they reach engineering
• Lead requirements gathering, requirement analysis, and risk analysis; own the SRS and risk documentation
• Champion UX and human-centered design so scientists, lab techs, and bioinformaticians can use what we ship
• Drive cross-team coordination, surface dependencies early, and keep delivery on track with minimal oversight
• Support troubleshooting during development and sustaining

Education and Experience:

• Bachelors degree in Bioengineering, Computer Science or related field with 8–12+ years in life sciences software, with working knowledge of cell biology, multi-omic analysis, and DNA sequencing
• Track record shipping software that spans instrumentation, cloud SaaS, and data analysis
• Strong requirements engineering and solution architecture chops
• Hands-on comfort: can read and write code, prototype quickly with AI tools, run and interpret test suites, and engage substantively in technical design reviews
• Experience owning product across multiple scrum teams as an I; leading through influence, vision, and technical credibility rather than authority
• Strong analytical and communication skills; thrives in ambiguity and fast iteration
• Experience with ML/AI products: traditional ML pipelines (model training, evaluation, deployment) and/or LLM/agent-based features (RAG, tool use, evals)
• Familiarity with our stack: Go, React, MongoDB, Redis, gRPC, AWS, Ubuntu Core
• Familiarity with our AI tools: Cursor, Claude
• Experience with regulated software workflows (IEC 62304, FDA 21 CFR Part 820, ISO 13485, or IVDR) including design controls, traceability, and verification/validation documentation for SaMD or instrument software
• Cross-organizational or inter-company collaboration experience

Physical Requirements:

• Ability to lift up to 20 pounds
• Must be flexible in working hours as this position may require customer support during non-regular business hours

Location: San Diego (onsite)

Travel: Up to 10% or as needed

Job Type: Full-time, Exempt

Base Compensation Pay Range: $144,000 - $190,000

In addition to base compensation noted above, you will be eligible for stock options, discretionary annual bonus, no cost health insurance plans, 401k with company match, and flexible paid time off.

Please note: Base compensation will depend on multiple factors, including geographic location, qualifications, and experience.

We foster an environment such that all people are afforded the freedom to pursue their passions without regard to race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin, gender (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, veteran status or any other characteristics protected by law.