Senior Software Engineer, Bioinformatics

Guardant Health • Palo Alto, CA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

Guardant Health is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Bioinformatics to design, develop, and maintain scalable software supporting bioinformatics, life sciences, and clinical diagnostic applications. The role combines full-stack engineering with modern software engineering and AI-assisted development practices to address complex scientific and clinical workflows. The engineer will work in a fast-paced environment with geographically distributed, cross-functional teams and build software for which reliability, traceability, and maintainability are essential.

The position involves developing backend services and APIs with Python frameworks such as Django and FastAPI, creating React user interfaces, designing PostgreSQL data models, and deploying and operating services in AWS. The engineer will apply practices including automated testing, code review, CI/CD, observability, security, and infrastructure automation, while translating scientific and business requirements into reliable software. The role also includes evaluating and responsibly adopting AI-enabled development tools, documenting technical designs and operations, contributing to architecture and engineering standards, resolving production issues, and mentoring other engineers.

The role supports complex scientific datasets, analytical workflows, and computational pipelines. It calls for close collaboration with bioinformatics scientists, computational biologists, product managers, quality teams, and other stakeholders. For U.S. employees living within 50 miles of a Guardant facility, the stated hybrid schedule requires onsite work Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, with work-from-home days for individual-focused work, subject to management and related policies. The work is primarily in a desk or office environment, with possible exposure to laboratory noise, fumes, and biohazard material.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• At least 5 years of professional software development experience, including significant hands-on Python development.
• Strong experience developing production applications with Python web frameworks such as Django, FastAPI, or similar technologies.
• Experience developing modern web applications using React, JavaScript/TypeScript, HTML, and CSS.
• Strong relational database experience, particularly with PostgreSQL, including schema design, queries, performance optimization, and data integrity.
• Hands-on experience developing, deploying, and supporting applications in AWS.
• Strong understanding of RESTful APIs, distributed systems, service-oriented architectures, and modern application design principles.
• Experience with automated testing, source control, code review, CI/CD, and modern DevOps practices.
• Demonstrated experience using AI-enabled software engineering tools for coding, testing, debugging, code review, and documentation.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, including the ability to work on complex technical problems with limited supervision.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, evolving environment and manage multiple priorities.
• Ability to collaborate successfully with geographically distributed and cross-functional teams.

Nice To Haves

• Experience developing software in life sciences, biotechnology, genomics, healthcare, or clinical diagnostics.
• Familiarity with bioinformatics workflows, genomic data, computational pipelines, or scientific computing environments.
• Experience developing software in a regulated environment, particularly systems subject to FDA requirements or other healthcare or life-sciences quality regulations.
• Familiarity with regulated-product software practices, including requirements traceability, design controls, verification and validation, change control, and documentation.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with AWS services such as ECS/EKS, Lambda, RDS, S3, CloudWatch, and IAM.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code technologies such as Terraform or AWS CDK.
• Experience designing systems that process large scientific or clinical datasets.
• Familiarity with data privacy, security, and compliance considerations for clinical or healthcare data.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain robust software applications and services supporting bioinformatics and clinical workflows.
• Build scalable backend services and APIs using Python and web frameworks such as Django and FastAPI.
• Develop responsive and maintainable user interfaces using technologies such as React.
• Design and optimize relational data models and database solutions using PostgreSQL.
• Architect, deploy, and operate applications and services in AWS environments.
• Apply automated testing, code reviews, CI/CD, observability, security, and infrastructure automation.
• Partner with bioinformatics scientists, computational biologists, product managers, quality teams, and other stakeholders to translate requirements into reliable software.
• Develop software that supports complex scientific datasets, analytical workflows, and computational pipelines.
• Use AI-assisted development tools for code generation, code review, testing, debugging, technical documentation, and developer workflows.
• Evaluate emerging AI development tools and establish practices for their responsible use in the software development lifecycle.
• Produce technical documentation, architecture specifications, design documents, and operational procedures.
• Contribute to architectural decisions and establish software development standards and engineering best practices.
• Troubleshoot complex production issues, conduct root-cause analysis, and drive long-term corrective solutions.
• Work across time zones with geographically distributed engineering, scientific, and business teams.
• Mentor other engineers and contribute to the technical growth of the engineering organization.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior