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About the Role

Substrate is building an AI-native automated lab that produces biological data at scale. This role involves building the infrastructure software that runs the lab, translating scientific intent into executed experiments and capturing all actions as structured data with full provenance.

Responsibilities

• Build the infrastructure software that runs the lab, working across the stack.
• Develop the execution product to turn customer intent into executed lab work, including a translation layer for experiments, an orchestration layer for scheduling, and outputting structured, AI-ready data.
• Develop the observation product to capture metadata and map it into a knowledge graph for full provenance.
• Own services or surfaces end to end, including reliability, observability, and on-call responsibilities.
• Contribute to shaping the architecture and engineering culture.
• Work at the boundary with scientists and the intelligence team.
• Ship production code from the first weeks.
• Help set the architecture and engineering culture.
• Work at the boundary with scientists running assays and the intelligence team.
• Get productive in the codebase and ship first changes into the execution pipeline.
• Take ownership of a service or surface.
• Ship a meaningful slice of your surface into the live, semi-automated lab.
• Wire work into the shared data model for full provenance capture.
• Own your surface end to end, including reliability, observability, and on-call.
• Help shape the architecture and next hires as the team and lab scale.
• Build with coding agents by default.
• Work with rigorous CI/CD and automated testing.
• Own architecture, reliability, observability, and the on-call pager.

Requirements

• Shipped production systems that other people depend on.
• Write good code at speed.
• Have opinions about architecture and know when to defer.
• Happy owning a service end to end, including reliability, observability, and on-call.
• Worked across the stack and can pick up whatever the problem needs.
• Curiosity about what this infrastructure makes possible and its implications for users.
• Strive for excellence and raise the bar.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and have a bias towards action, learning, and iterating.
• Able to decide on partial information and revisit when better information arrives.
• Possess big-picture thinking, constantly questioning the 'why', 'who', and 'how to improve'.
• Generalist with experience in backend services, APIs, data pipelines, and front-end.
• Fluent in at least one language for building production services.
• Happy to work in whatever stack the team settles on.
• Experience at the software-to-physical-world boundary (lab automation, robotics, manufacturing, logistics, scientific instruments, or energy) is a plus.
• Experience with orchestration, scheduling, or workflow engines, and distributed systems at scale is a plus.
• Experience with data-intensive systems: pipelines, ontologies or knowledge graphs, provenance or lineage is a plus.
• Early-stage or founding-engineer experience at a venture-backed company is a plus.
• Ability to work in a hybrid pattern with regular time in the lab.
• Ability to work at the boundary of software, hardware, and biology.
• Screening, behavioural and cultural-fit conversation, technical session or work sample, references.

Skills

• Backend services
• APIs
• Data pipelines
• Front-end development
• Production code development
• Architecture design
• Reliability engineering
• Observability
• On-call support
• CI/CD
• Automated testing
• Coding agents
• Orchestration
• Scheduling
• Workflow engines
• Distributed systems
• Data-intensive systems
• Ontologies
• Knowledge graphs
• Provenance tracking
• Lineage tracking

Location

• London, UK

Work Type

• Hybrid

Experience Level

• Generalist
• Founding engineer experience (nice to have)

Benefits

• 30 days of annual leave plus public holidays (UK)
• Pension with a 10% employer contribution (UK)
• Top-tier private health cover with Bupa (UK)

About the Company

• Substrate is building the critical infrastructure layer between AI and biology: an AI-native automated lab that produces biological data at scale.
• AI for biology has a data problem, not a compute problem; Substrate generates high-quality, large-scale data needed for biological foundation models.
• Venture-backed company building its first lab in London with US expansion planned.
• Rapidly expanding team across science, intelligence, software, operations, and partnerships.
• Team members have experience from Automata, Palantir, Owkin, Illumina, and Exscientia.
• Not a cloud lab or a CRO; provides infrastructure to turn scientific intent into executed experiments and structured, AI-ready data.
• The software built runs a physical laboratory, orchestrating workflows that move real liquid, cells, and instruments.
• The data captured is the product.
• Office is located beside the lab for observation.
• Work involves a mix of software, hardware, and biology.
• Small team that documents in the open and backs the best idea.
• Focus on looking after people well.

Equal Opportunity

• Substrate is an equal opportunity employer.
• Hiring decisions are made on merit, scope-fit, and the strength of the working relationship.
• Applications are welcome from candidates of any background.