Backend Software Engineer

Backend Software Engineer

• Location: London, King's Cross
• Duration: 6 months
• Client: Multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company

We see a world in which advanced applications of Machine Learning and AI will allow us to develop novel therapies to existing diseases and to quickly respond to emerging or changing diseases with personalized drugs, driving better outcomes at reduced cost with fewer side effects. It is an ambitious vision that will require the development of products and solutions at the cutting edge of Machine Learning and AI. We're looking for a highly skilled software engineer to help us make this vision a reality.

Competitive candidates will have a track record of writing and shipping quality, well-documented and well-tested software - preferably in the AI/ML industry. Candidates should be comfortable with modern, cloud-native computing, and with continuous development and production deployment on cloud platforms to large user populations. Educational or professional background in the biological sciences is a plus but is not necessary; passion to help therapies for new and existing diseases, and a pattern of continuous learning and development is mandatory.

The AI/ML team is built on the principles of ownership, accountability, continuous development, and collaboration. We hire for the long term, and we're motivated to make this a great place to work. Our leaders will be committed to your career and development from day one.

Key responsibilities

• Back End development for a Python web application
• Integration of AI/ML components with Front End, Back End, data and compute infrastructure
• Responsible for high quality software implementations according to best practices, including automated test suites and documentation
• Develop, measure, and monitor key metrics for all tools and services and consistently seek to iterate on and improve them
  • Participate in code reviews, continuously improving personal standards as well as the wider team and product
  • Liaise with other technical staff and data engineers in the team and across allied teams, to build an end-to-end pipeline consuming other data products

Basic qualifications:

• Demonstrated experience of Python Back End development (eg using FastAPI)
• Bachelors degree in a relevant field (including computational, numerate or life sciences), or equivalent experience
• Cloud experience (eg Google Cloud and cloud run preferred OR Spark and big querry) including core web application infrastructure is essential
• Strong skills in Python
• Unit testing experience (eg pytest)
• Knowledge of agile practices and able to perform in agile software development environments
• Strong knowledge of modern software development tools/ways of working (eg git/GitHub, DevOps tools for deployment) - should be able to show practice of commit early and deploy often

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience with Docker or containerized applications, especially architecture of multi-container applications
• Demonstrated experience with biological or scientific data (eg genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics), or pharmaceutical industry experience
• Knowledge of AI/ML approaches and deployment of AI/ML powered applications - especially using language models or NLP and agent-based approaches (eg LangGraph, PydanticAI, AutoGen)
• Knowledge of AI/ML evaluation and benchmarking approaches, experience with iterative improvement of AI/ML models and products
• Some experience with Front End software development (eg React)