Senior Backend Engineer

Job description

About SandboxAQ

SandboxAQ is a high-growth company delivering AI solutions that address some of the world’s greatest challenges. The company’s Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) power advances in life sciences, financial services, navigation, cybersecurity, and other sectors.

We are a global team that is tech-focused and includes experts in AI, chemistry, cybersecurity, physics, mathematics, medicine, engineering, and other specialties. The company emerged from Alphabet Inc. as an independent, growth capital-backed company in 2022, funded by leading investors and supported by a braintrust of industry leaders.

At SandboxAQ, we’ve cultivated an environment that encourages creativity, collaboration, and impact. By investing deeply in our people, we’re building a thriving, global workforce poised to tackle the world’s epic challenges. Join us to advance your career in pursuit of an inspiring mission, in a community of like-minded people who value entrepreneurialism, ownership, and transformative impact.

About the Role

SandboxAQ is seeking a backend engineer generalist to contribute to our drug discovery and chemistry simulation platform. You’ll get exposure to a wide variety of areas, including:

• Core application development -  we’re building a platform that powers our R&D in life sciences and chemistry simulation. You will contribute to its core functionalities, APIs, and data and control planes.
• DevOps -  you will contribute to build, testing, and deployment pipelines for a complex set of build artifacts and IaC-managed infrastructure.
• User and product work - you will work closely with the researchers that are using the software you’re building and you’ll immediately get to see your impact. You’ll work with the product team to gather and prioritize the feedback.

You’ll bring experience writing high-quality, readable, well-tested code. You will have experience with API design, database fundamentals, and CI/CD pipelines. You’re entrepreneurial and customer-obsessed. Most importantly, you’ll bring a track record of working in a fast-moving software development team, exploring new technologies, and solving problems across an entire software stack.

What You’ll Do

• Contribute to the development of SandboxAQ’s chemistry and life sciences simulation platform.
• Work closely with users and members of the product team to measure the impact of the code you develop on users, gather feedback, and iterate on your software.
• Participate in planning, design, and sprint ceremony meetings.
• Embed closely with R&D teams to assist in delivering project goals and drive adoption of practices and tooling.
• Collaborate closely with the product team and internal stakeholders in all phases of software development to validate the solutions you propose and implement.
• In collaboration with the rest of the engineering team, build and manage infrastructure for SandboxAQ’s simulation and data platform.
• Review code and participate in design and architectural discussions.

About You

• 3+ years of experience with Python with knowledge of software design principles and architectural patterns.
• Comfort writing clean, readable, well-tested, maintainable code.
• Experience with at least one major cloud provider. GCP preferred.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to effectively influence a cross-functional team.
• Experience with building REST APIs and knowledge of best practices.
• Knowledge of cloud orchestration technologies like K8s or batch-type systems as well as workflow management tools (Airflow or similar)
• Knowledge of database systems and related concepts: ORMs, schemas, and transactional vs. analytic systems.
• Exposure to Terraform or another IaC system, along with DevOps and GitOps.
• Knowledge of CI/CD best practices and building CI/CD pipelines.

Nice to have

• Domain experience in advanced materials, drug discovery, cheminformatics, or other areas of chemistry or biology, especially experience with AI systems applied to these domains.
• Delivering scientific code for R&D projects, especially in the simulation and numerical optimization domains
• HCP systems, GPU programming and optimization
• AI applications in knowledge graphs, AI agents, and multi-agent systems.

The US base salary range for this full-time position is expected to be $154k - $216k per year. Our salary ranges are determined by role and level. Within the range, individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. This role may be eligible for annual discretionary bonuses and equity.

SandboxAQ welcomes all.

We are committed to creating an inclusive culture where we have zero tolerance for discrimination. We invest in our employees’ personal and professional growth. Once you work with us, you can’t go back to normalcy because great breakthroughs come from great teams and we are the best in AI and quantum technology.

We offer competitive salaries, stock options depending on employment type, generous learning opportunities, medical/dental/vision, family planning/fertility, PTO (summer and winter breaks), financial wellness resources, 401(k) plans, and more.

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status.

Accommodations: We provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities in job application procedures for open roles. If you need such an accommodation, please let a member of our Recruiting team know.