UX Software Engineer - Full Stack

Full Time
Berkeley, CA
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Are you looking for a new challenge? We’re building a data platform to help our scientists use robots and machine learning to grow bacteria.

The MicroByre team brings new bacteria into the stable. The vast majority of microbes on the planet are not currently considered cultivable let alone genetically modifiable. MicroByre domesticates and then genetically engineers otherwise inaccessible and under-appreciated bacteria. Newly cooperative bacteria will help us replace ancient biomass (petrochemicals) with renewable biomass (lawn clippings) efficiently and economically.

We need your expert help. Your teammates are world class chemists, molecular biologists, synthetic biologists, and microbiologists using robots to grow bacteria. We have a wide variety of data, visualization needs, and workflows for automation of our processes. Our users interact with our data platform via a variety of tools and dashboards and high quality user experience is important to us.

You will show them a new ways to visual our data, traverse graphs of genomic data, display and curate taxonomies. You'll be part of a team developing a new data platform with interfaces for programming automations, data analysis, and visualizations while hiding the complexities of data collection, annotation, task orchestration, and robot control. Your creativity will show up in everything from python notebooks, dedicated dashboards, to single-page browser-based applications.

We primarily develop our systems in python, develop API services in Flask, and deploy services in Kubernetes. User interfaces for these services are developed in a combination of technologies like React, visualization libraries like cytoscape.js, toolkit like UIKit, just plain HTML/CSS and JavaScript.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Develop and document user interface designs in collaboration with our various platform engineers, scientists, and business users to develop good UI designs using best-of-breed techniques like wireframes, task models, etc.
  • Collect and document user stories around interfaces to data, workflows, and systems
  • Develop front-end services for interacting with our data and APIs
  • Build user interfaces and data visualizations for a variety of purposes with deployment in Jupyter notebooks (via embedded HTML or python) notebooks or in web-based applications.
  • Participate in tool and framework selection for developing front end application.
  • Develop visualizations for data including taxonomies, genome annotations, and experiment data analysis in collaboration with our data scientists and bioinformatics.
  • Collaborate with the platform engineers on deployment automation and build processes for iterative software development and good CI/CD devops.

This role provides the opportunity to work directly with senior staff building the data platform and services that interact with our scalable automation for our scientific workflows.

Required qualifications:

  • B.S. or higher in computer science related field or sufficient experience
  • 3-5+ years overall experience and 3+ years experience in front-end application development
  • Experience in UI/UX best practices for collecting user stories, developing task models, wireframes, and design tools
  • Expertise in web development and debugging with specific skills in HTML/CSS and UI frameworks
  • Fluency in JavaScript and modest Python development for web application development
  • Experience with React or a willingness to learn
  • Experience adhering to best practices for software generation and maintenance (e.g., testing, documentation, version control, build processes, deployment automation, etc.)
  • A willingness to learn the basics of genetics, microbiology, and chemistry to understand our users and their endeavors.
  • Willing to be "hand-ons" in developing and deploying our user experience.

Bonus qualifications, skills, or experience:

  • An understanding and experience with containerization or Kubernetes for deployment
  • Experience displaying or visualizing scientific data
  • Rockstar Python skills
  • Flask applications
  • Experience with any cloud services
  • Experience with "low code" solutions for building applications
  • Javascript frameworks such as UIKit, Cyptoscape.js, React
  • Databases (relational, Redis, property graphs), query languages (e.g., GraphQL, Cypher, SQL), YAML/JSON, Swagger
  • Jupyter notebooks

Flexible working hours

This position requires a high degree of interactions with our users but we're very flexible. We want you to meet our scientists, build a good working relationship with them (and our data), while offering a schedule that works best for you! So you need to be near enough to be in the office on a regular, reliable basis with remote work available on a flexible schedule.

About us

MicroByre is a biotech startup located in the Berkeley/Oakland Bay Area. We closed a round of funding in early 2022 and are growing fast!

We offer a flexible working environment with a competitive salary and the opportunity to work remotely (flex or partial).

The salary range for the position is $120k-$145k + equity

We offer competitive benefits:

  • Three weeks paid vacation each year
  • Every federal holiday is a paid holiday
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • Life insurance and disability coverage
  • 401(k) program with 3% employer match
  • Equity

We offer a professional and intellectually stimulating work environment with plenty of opportunities to train up. You'll be surrounded by industry leaders who can provide mentorship. Also, we can provide other professional development or training in job-related skills.

We take a lesson from the diversity evident from the study of ecology: it takes a lot of different kinds of skills working together with mutual respect to make a dent in the world. We are committed to maintaining a work environment free of harassment and discrimination. All recruitment, salary, and promotion decisions are based on business need, qualification, and job requirements with no regard to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, family or parental status, veteran or disability status, religion or belief, or age. MicroByre is not sponsoring work visas or reimbursing relocation expenses for this position.

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