Jobs and Careers

Senior Software Platform Engineer

Emeryville, United Statesfull_timeVerifiedPosted 3 Jun 2026

About the role

Prolific Machines is ushering in a new era of biotechnology with light. Our mission is to make next-generation therapies broadly available to patients. Our first-of-its-kind Photomolecular Platform uses light to precisely guide how cells produce complex biologics, enabling higher titers, improved quality, and faster development timelines. By helping partners overcome today’s manufacturing bottlenecks, we’re accelerating the delivery of life-changing medicines. Prolific is supported by leading investors, including Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mayfield, and SOSV.

Help us create a brighter tomorrow with biology. We're looking for mission-driven, talented, and kind people to join our team.

This is a high-ownership role with significant opportunity to shape the long-term direction of software systems at Prolific. As a foundational Software Engineer within the organization, you will have substantial influence over architecture, tooling, and long-term technical direction.

We’re looking for a Software Engineer to help define and build the next-generation software and controls platform underlying Prolific’s illumination systems. This role will serve as a foundational software hire within a multidisciplinary illuminator technology team, helping define software architecture across device control, cloud-connected infrastructure, internal tooling, and future customer-facing systems.

This individual will work closely with Firmware, Hardware, Data, and Bioprocess Engineering teams to develop scalable, production-ready control systems for next-generation illumination products. Over time, this role is expected to help define software architecture, interfaces, and development strategy as Prolific expands both internal software capabilities and external development partnerships.

This is not a traditional consumer web or SaaS role. Success in this position requires strong systems thinking and comfort operating across the hardware/software boundary. The ideal candidate enjoys working in-person, operating close to real-world systems and hardware, and is comfortable working across abstraction layers rather than specializing narrowly in frontend or backend development.

This role will be primarily based on-site in Emeryville, CA with some hybrid flexibility depending on current project needs.

Responsibilities

Architect and develop the software platform connecting Prolific illumination hardware, firmware, cloud infrastructure, internal tooling, and future operational and customer-deployed systems
Define software interfaces, communication layers, and subsystem boundaries across distributed control systems
Collaborate closely with firmware and hardware engineers to design robust hardware/software interactions
Establish scalable software infrastructure and engineering practices suitable for long-term productization
Help define technical scopes, interfaces, and development strategy for external software development partners and contractors where appropriate
Contribute hands-on across the stack while helping shape longer-term software technical direction

Requirements

MS with 5+ years or BS with 7+ years of professional software development experience. Degree in Software Engineering , Computer Science, or a related field preferred.
Strong systems-level thinking and ability to reason across software, firmware, hardware, and operational workflows
Ability to balance rapid prototyping with long-term architectural scalability
Experience decomposing complex systems into modular, maintainable subsystems
Fluency in Python and proficiency in at least one other general-purpose language (e.g. TypeScript, Go, Rust)
Experience defining requirements, designing, implementing, and deploying software
Experience designing software for reliability, maintainability, and operational robustness in mission-critical systems
Experience deploying and maintaining cloud-connected applications or services
Experience working with SQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.)
Experience working closely with end users to iteratively improve software usability and workflows
Experience setting up and owning their own development environment (incl. unit/integration/end-to-end testing, continuous integration, etc.)
Experience interfacing software with hardware systems (serial, TCP/IP, etc.) and ability to debug issues across the software/hardware boundary
Comfort working in Linux environments