About Satomic

Satomic’s mission is to close the gap from idea to molecule with faster navigation of chemical space. We are building an automated chemistry platform that integrates laboratory robotics, software, and AI to transform small-molecule synthesis and drug discovery.

Satomic has raised a $15M Seed from fantastic investors including Riot Ventures, HOF Capital, and Compound VC, and our team includes alumni from leading large pharmas, small biotechs, and AI labs.

This role is critical to Satomic’s mission of closing the gap from idea to molecule by building the chemistry search engine that lets our customers see, query, and reach into Satomic’s accessible chemical space: trillions of multistep-accessible molecules grounded in the platform’s actual synthesis capabilities. As Satomic builds toward an “API to Atoms,” this role ensures that the interface our partners query against is reliable, low-latency, and grounded in the real synthetic capabilities of the platform. The medicinal chemists, computational scientists, and generative-model-driven design teams will depend on the product of your work to navigate chemical space as they solve the most important challenges in medicine and human health.

About the Role

This is a senior, hands-on engineering role on the Development team. You'll be building, not managing a team. You'll work on the core software platform at the center of Satomic's chemistry operations: the orchestration layer, internal tooling, and data systems that move a synthesis request from intake through execution to result. You'll work closely with the hiring manager and the rest of Development, alongside automation engineers, chemists, and our ML and cheminformatics teams, with the scope you own growing as the platform does.

The right candidate is a strong, full-stack software engineer who owns problems end-to-end. You will design services and APIs, model the data that flows through the platform, and build the operator- and scientist-facing interfaces that sit on top of it, working across the stack from the database up to the UI. You'll help drive the architectural decisions that keep the system correct as the platform grows, spanning request orchestration and job scheduling, data capture and storage, the services other teams build against, and the internal web tools your colleagues use every day.

We are deliberately looking for an engineer whose craft is not tied to a single language. Day to day, this role is mostly Python on the backend and TypeScript/React on the frontend, and we expect real fluency across that full stack. But we care far more about the judgment underneath: how you decompose a problem, model data, reason about failure, and choose the right tool for the job. The strongest engineers we know treat languages as instruments, comfortable across the stack today and equally ready to pick up a performance-oriented language like Rust, Go, or C++ (or something else entirely) when a problem calls for it. If "what language?" is the first question you ask rather than "what's the actual problem?", this probably isn't the right fit.

Technologies and systems you may work with include:

• Python on the backend and TypeScript/React on the frontend, with the freedom to reach for the right tool when a problem warrants it
• Relational databases and SQL (e.g. Postgres), plus the data pipelines and event-driven systems that move data through the platform
• REST/gRPC APIs, message queues, and distributed systems design for experiment orchestration and platform control
• Cloud infrastructure (AWS / GCP / Azure), infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, observability, and testing frameworks
• Integration points with laboratory automation systems, ML/conversion models, and the cheminformatics search engine

This is a hands-on role for an engineer who likes owning problems across the stack and working closely with a small, multidisciplinary team.

Expected Outcomes

By day 30, you will have:

• Developed a working understanding of the platform end-to-end, including how a request flows from intake through automated synthesis to result and where the software seams and pain points are.
• Shipped meaningful improvements or features into production, with tests and documentation.
• Engaged with the existing roadmap and critical path to identify and sequence their own near-term priorities, flagging dependencies and risks along the way.

By day 90, you will have:

• Delivered at least one core service or system component that other teams build against, with a clear interface and a solid understanding of its failure modes.
• Established or strengthened the engineering practices around your work (testing, deployment, observability) so the team can move faster with confidence.
• Seen your work run under real production load as we (ambitiously) begin shipping platform deliveries to customers — making real-world impact by the end of this window.
• Partnered with the automation and chemistry teams to ensure platform runs produce structured, traceable data through the systems you work on.

By year 1, you will have:

• Become a primary owner of a major surface area of the platform, making architectural decisions on it independently.
• Kept those systems reliable as the underlying chemistry and automation requirements shifted, evolving the architecture to hold up under real change.
• Raised the engineering bar on the team through the systems you build, the reviews you give, and the practices you help establish.

By year 5, you will have:

• Become a recognized technical leader within Satomic, shaping how the company builds software and mentoring strong engineers.
• Built core platform systems that have scaled through multiple generations of chemistry capability without accumulating architectural debt that slows the company down.
• Made the software platform a durable competitive advantage in how Satomic runs chemistry at scale.

What You Will Own

The areas you'll own and help shape:

• Design, implementation, and operation of core platform services, APIs, and the orchestration layer behind Satomic's "API to Atoms."
• The data model and data systems that capture, track, and expose what happens across the platform, in collaboration with the teams that produce and consume that data.
• Internal tooling that operators, chemists, and other engineers depend on to do their work.
• Engineering quality and operation of the systems you work on: testing, deployment, infrastructure-as-code, observability, running them in production, and the architectural decisions that keep them correct as the platform evolves.
• Proactive discovery of platform needs, working directly with the chemistry and automation teams not just to fill requests but to show them what's newly possible and surface features and improvements they wouldn't have thought to ask for.
• Technical judgment calls (build-vs-buy, where complexity lives, which abstractions to commit to) for your area of the platform, made in coordination with the broader Development team on anything that touches shared infrastructure.

You run what you build. Operating your services in production is part of the role: owning the deployment, instrumentation, alerting, and debugging for what you ship. As the platform matures and carries real customer load, this includes joining a light on-call rotation for the systems the team owns. We're not there yet: we'll build the rotation, runbooks, and alerting thresholds together as production demand makes it necessary, rather than imposing a heavy on-call burden before the platform warrants it.

What This Role Is (and Is Not)

This role is:

• A senior, hands-on role building core software systems on Satomic's platform.
• A full-stack software engineering role (backend services, data, and frontend) where systems thinking, sound architecture, and the ability to own problems end-to-end matter.
• A role where you operate what you build, with infrastructure and on-call shared across the team as the platform matures.

This role is NOT:

• A cheminformatics or chemistry-domain engineering role. That work is owned elsewhere on the team, and while chemistry curiosity is welcome, you do not need a chemistry background.
• A pure ML or model-training position.
• A single-language specialist role. We want an engineer whose skill transfers across the stack and across languages.
• A write-the-code-and-hand-it-off role. You operate what you build (alongside the team, with on-call shared as the platform matures), rather than tossing it over the wall for someone else to run.

Qualifications

We are looking for a strong, versatile software engineer who takes real ownership of the problems they work on. If you don't tick every box below but recognize the shape of the work and have a track record of learning fast and shipping at the edge of your competence, please apply. We are looking for the engineer, not the perfectly formatted resume.

• 5+ years building and operating production software, with demonstrated ownership of systems end-to-end: design, delivery, and the consequences of running them in production.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: data modeling, API and service design, testing, and reasoning about reliability and failure.
• Strong Python (backend) and TypeScript/React (frontend) required, paired with genuine enthusiasm for the craft of software engineering and a demonstrated ability (or clear eagerness) to pick up new languages and reach for the right tool, whether that's Rust, Go, C++, or something else.
• Comfort reasoning about how your code performs, and the judgment to know when performance matters and when it doesn't.
• A track record of sound technical judgment, and of working across disciplines to understand what actually needs to be built.
• Solid working knowledge of relational databases and SQL such as Postgres, including schema design, query performance, and modeling data you can trust.
• Experience designing and operating APIs and distributed systems (REST/gRPC, message queues), with sound judgment about service boundaries and failure handling.
• Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and comfort owning your slice of infrastructure: infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, observability, and operating services in production.
• Bonus: experience building software at the intersection of the physical and digital world, such as laboratory automation, robotics, instrumentation, scientific data, or similarly messy real-world systems.

Overview of Satomic's Interview Process

• Phone screen (15 to 30 minutes): the hiring manager will contact you for an introductory call to discuss the role, Satomic's mission and culture, and answer your early questions. This is not a technical evaluation.
• Technical phone screen (45 minutes): a more in-depth technical conversation with an engineer to discuss your background and dig into your hands-on experience. This is an initial technical evaluation ahead of the core interviews.
• Core Interviews (3 x 45 minutes): the hiring manager will coordinate a block where you have three 45-minute interviews back to back with different members of the Satomic team, who will ask about your past experience and fit for the role.
• Take-home assignment: a scoped engineering problem representative of the work at Satomic, completed on your own time.
• Final round: a technical review of your take-home submission and a presentation of prior work to the interview panel, so we understand how you work, how you think, and how you collaborate across disciplines.

Why Join Satomic?

Join a team tackling frontier challenges in chemistry and the biggest bottleneck in drug discovery, an opportunity to shape not just Satomic, but the future of how molecules are discovered and made.

Diversity & Inclusion

We know there's a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. At Satomic, we're committed to helping drive that change. Our culture is built on inclusion, humility, humanity, and ingenuity, values that guide how we work with one another and how we approach the challenges of scaling science. We believe that bringing together people with diverse perspectives, experiences, and ways of thinking is not just the right thing to do, but makes us stronger: we want every member of our team to feel they belong and can do the best work of their career here.

Our mission is to close the gap from idea to molecule. That mission carries responsibility: the chemistry we enable can accelerate access to life-changing medicines and technologies, but it can also pose risks if used carelessly. We're not agnostic to how our platform is applied. We care deeply about ensuring it is used for good. Building a team of diverse and thoughtful voices gives us the best chance of delivering a platform that not only advances the future of chemistry and drug discovery, but does so responsibly and with lasting positive impact on our world.

Compensation

This role offers a base salary of $150,000 - $185,000, along with meaningful equity ownership and competitive benefits.

We are an early-stage company and design offers to balance cash compensation with equity ownership. The salary range above reflects base pay only, and we work with candidates to build a package that aligns with their preferences.

Final offers are based on a candidate's experience and expected impact. For candidates exceptionally aligned with the role we are comfortable positioning offers toward the top of this range and beyond.

Development

SAN DIEGO, CA