Software Engineer (Open Level)

Software Engineer (Open Level)

New York, NY; Boston MA; San Francisco, CA

About Formation Bio

Formation Bio is a tech and AI driven pharma company differentiated by radically more efficient drug development.

Advancements in AI and drug discovery are creating more candidate drugs than the industry can progress because of the high cost and time of clinical trials. Recognizing that this development bottleneck may ultimately limit the number of new medicines that can reach patients, Formation Bio, founded in 2016 as TrialSpark Inc., has built technology platforms, processes, and capabilities to accelerate all aspects of drug development and clinical trials. Formation Bio partners, acquires, or in-licenses drugs from pharma companies, research organizations, and biotechs to develop programs past clinical proof of concept and beyond, ultimately helping to bring new medicines to patients. The company is backed by investors across pharma and tech, including a16z, Sequoia, Sanofi, Thrive Capital, John Doerr, Spark Capital, SV Angel Growth, and others.

At Formation Bio, our values are the driving force behind our mission to revolutionize the pharma industry. Every team and individual at the company shares these same values, and every team and individual plays a key part in our mission to bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently.

About the Position

We're hiring Software Engineers to help implement what engineering looks like at an AI-native pharma company. This is not a traditional SWE role and it's not an ML research role - it's for someone who builds production software in a world where AI has fundamentally changed what one engineer can do.

At Formation, the lines between engineering, product management, and data science are converging. Engineers talk directly to users, PMs write code, and domain experts across the company build and deploy real tools. We need engineers who thrive in that environment: people who move fast, care about the problem they're solving (not just the code), and see AI tools as a permanent force multiplier rather than a novelty.

You'll work across the drug development lifecycle - building systems that accelerate how we find, evaluate, develop, and deliver new medicines. You'll collaborate with clinical, regulatory, BD, and operations teams, not from behind a ticket queue, but embedded in the work. Some of what you build will be net-new products. Some will be infrastructure that enables non-engineers to build safely alongside you. All of it matters.

If you're energized by opportunity, and motivated by the idea that your work directly helps get medicines to patients faster, this is the role.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship production software that accelerates drug development - from internal tools to user-facing products to platform capabilities.
• Use AI tools (LLMs, agentic coding systems, retrieval-augmented pipelines) as a core part of how you work, not as an experiment on the side.
• Get close to the business. Understand the clinical, regulatory, or operational problem you're solving well enough to make good product decisions without waiting for a spec.
• Build for composability. Clean APIs, structured schemas, machine-readable documentation - what you build needs to be discoverable and extensible by people and agents who aren't engineers.
• Review and enable contributions from non-engineers. PMs, designers, and domain experts across the company are shipping code. You help ensure quality, security, and maintainability.
• Build the guardrails that lift technical quality. Proactively create automated tools - security scanners, skill files for end users, agents that clean up and standardize non-engineer code - that raise the floor of quality across the entire organization without slowing anyone down.
• Prototype rapidly. Many ideas should be live and testable within days, not weeks. Build the tool, get feedback, iterate.
• Collaborate across engineering, data science, product, and domain teams - the boundaries between these functions are fluid here, and we expect you to operate across them.

About You

• A track record of shipping production systems in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
• You build with AI tools daily. Claude Code, Copilot, agentic workflows - whatever the best current tools are, you're already using them and have opinions about what works.
• Strong fundamentals: you write clean, maintainable code, you understand distributed systems and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and you can debug hard problems.
• You're drawn to the problem space, not just the stack. You'd rather understand why a clinical operations team needs a tool than debate framework choices in isolation.
• Comfortable with ambiguity. You've worked in 0-to-1 settings or early-stage environments where the playbook didn't exist. That energizes you.
• Excellent communicator. You can explain technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders and align a room around a decision.
• Experience in pharma, biotech, or life sciences. Genuine curiosity about the domain.
• You want to operate at a higher tempo and a higher standard than you have before, and you want to be surrounded by people who hold themselves to the same bar.

Total Compensation Range: $204,500 - $267,000

Individual compensation is determined by several factors, including role scope, geographic location, and skills & experience. Your offer will reflect where you fall within the range based on these considerations. In addition to base salary, we offer equity, comprehensive benefits, and generous perks. If the posted range doesn't match your expectations, we still encourage you to apply!

Formation Bio is prioritizing hiring in key hubs, primarily the New York City and Boston metro areas, with a hybrid model requiring 3 days per week in office. Applicants from the Research Triangle (NC) and San Francisco Bay Area may also be considered. Please apply only if you reside in these locations or are willing to relocate.

Formation Bio is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome candidates from all backgrounds. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and related medical conditions), gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.