Senior Data Engineer, Drug Discovery Data Engineering

Calico•South San Francisco, CA

1d•$217,000 - $229,000•Onsite

About The Position

Calico is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to join our highly collaborative Engineering team as the founding member of the Drug Discovery Data Engineering group. To succeed, you will need to be an enthusiastic team player, detail-oriented, extremely organized, and comfortable working on complex data, software, and scientific problems. In this position, you will act as a technical bridge between our Medicinal Chemistry, Automation, Machine Learning, Assay Technology, and Protein Sciences groups. You will drive projects from requirements-gathering to production deployment, engineering high-performance data systems that integrate with our molecular databases (CDD Vault), inventory systems (Mosaic), electronic lab notebooks (Benchling), our internal data warehouse (BigQuery), and our internally developed AI platform. As the first hire on this team, you will play a pivotal role in defining data flows, building web applications for stakeholder review, and establishing the engineering culture for this important growth area.

Requirements

BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
5+ years of professional software or data engineering experience on the small molecule and antibody informatics side of pharmaceutical R&D
Proficiency in applying laboratory informatics systems such as CDD Vault, Titian Mosaic, and Benchling to the drug discovery process
Fluency in Python with a strong grasp of software and data engineering principles (testing, modularity, design patterns, data modeling)
Demonstrated experience developing and deploying cloud-based applications on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) (preferred), AWS, or Azure
Strong experience with modern web frameworks and infrastructure, specifically FastAPI, React, Kubernetes, and Terraform
Proven ability to lead complex projects involving diverse stakeholders (e.g. both bench scientists and Machine Learning engineers) from concept to production
Experience enforcing robust data governance policies and compliance with internal information security standards and best practices
Must be willing to work onsite at least four days per week

Nice To Haves

Experience working with large-scale biological or chemical datasets, including chemical and biological ontologies
Prior experience managing external partnerships and vendors in the informatics space
Experience with system administration of informatics platforms, including setting information security standards and negotiation of software contracts

Responsibilities

End-to-End Project Ownership: Collaborating with scientists in Assay Technology, Medicinal Chemistry, and Protein Sciences to gather requirements, architect solutions, and deploy production-grade software that facilitates data movement and analysis
System Integration: Designing and implementing robust integrations between internal pipelines and third-party platforms, specifically the CDD molecular database, Mosaic inventory systems, and Benchling ELN
Data Flow Architecture: Defining and optimizing data flows across the organization (e.g., ensuring seamless data handover from Machine Learning -> Protein Sciences -> Assay Technologies) to accelerate the drug discovery feedback loop
Full-Stack Tool Development: Developing data systems and internal web applications (using React and Python) that allow stakeholders to review, visualize, and communicate complex scientific data
Mentorship & Leadership: Serving as a senior technical voice within a larger Engineering team; providing mentorship to junior engineers across Calico and helping onboard future hires into the Drug Discovery Data Engineering team
Engineering Excellence: Championing best practices for infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and containerization while helping to set standards for data engineering at Calico