Principal Member of Technical Staff, Product Engineering

About us

Edison Scientific builds and deploys AI scientist agents to accelerate science and the development of new medicines. We are an ambitious team run by scientists and engineers from leading institutions across biology, physics, chemistry, and AI.

The Role

As a Principal Member of Technical Staff (Full-stack, Backend-Focused, Python) you’ll help build and support our core platform that automates scientific discovery. You’ll work across the stack designing and building backend services, APIs, and data pipelines, while also contributing to user-facing features that make those capabilities accessible and intuitive.

Our mission is to build an AI scientist, and you’ll help build the tools, interfaces, and data systems it relies on. While this role leans heavily toward backend engineering, you’ll regularly collaborate with frontend engineers, designers, and researchers to deliver end-to-end functionality.

At Edison Scientific, full-stack engineering isn’t about doing “a little bit of everything.” It’s about owning features from concept to production, understanding how systems fit together, and building reliable foundations that accelerate humanity’s ability to ask bigger questions- and find answers faster.

This role is on-site at our San Francisco office in the Dogpatch neighborhood. Our office is a converted warehouse with high ceilings, open space, and a team that genuinely believes in what they're building.

This position is part of the Product Engineering team.

Responsibilities

• Help define the long-term technical architecture for the product platform.

• Lead the design, implementation, and maintenance of backend services, APIs, and databases that power the scientific discovery platform.

• Drive engineering standards, reliability, and scalability across the organization.

• Partner with engineering leadership on technical strategy and roadmap planning.

• Mentor senior engineers and elevate engineering practices across teams.

• Build and extend data pipelines that support AI agents and research workflows.

• Implement monitoring, observability, and automated testing to ensure system reliability and uptime.

• Collaborate with engineering, product, and research teams to ship new AI-driven features and services.

• Grow as a software engineer within a highly collaborative team working at the frontier of AI for science.

Qualifications

• Typically, 10+ years of software engineering experience, with exposure to both backend and frontend development.

• Strong experience in at least one backend language (e.g., Python, Node.js), with an interest in deepening backend expertise. (our interview process requires Python)

• Experience designing and consuming APIs (FastAPI, REST; GraphQL a plus).

• Familiarity with frontend frameworks (e.g., React, Next.js, or similar) and modern web development practices.

• Working knowledge of relational or document databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, or similar).

• Exposure to cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerized environments (Docker; Kubernetes a plus).

• Experience with version control, CI/CD pipelines, and basic automated testing.

• Strong curiosity, a growth mindset, and eagerness to learn in a fast-moving environment.

Bonus points for

• Experience with data-heavy systems, scientific tooling, or ML/AI-adjacent platforms.

• Prior work in startups or small teams with end-to-end ownership.

Salary

$175,000- $240,000 • Offers equity

Why join us?

We're a fast-moving, mission-driven culture where smart people do their best work and actually enjoy doing it. We also offer full-time employees the following:

• Competitive salary and equity

• Full healthcare coverage; we pay 100% of premiums for you and your dependents

• Support for growing families, including a yearly new parent stipend and fertility coverage through Carrot

• Mental health support through Rula, our in-network therapist and psychiatrist network with fast availability

• 12 weeks of paid parental leave for maternity, paternity, and adoption

• Pet care support with a yearly employer-funded stipend for your animal companions

• Commuter benefits so you can pay for transit and parking with pre-tax dollars

• 401(k) company matching

• $300 health and wellness benefit quarterly

• Lunch is on us every day you're in the office, and dinner is on us when you're working late

• Regular team off-sites and company events

Edison Scientific is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.