Software Engineer - Internship
Octant Bio
Summary
This is a ~12-week internship for summer 2027, onsite in Emeryville, CA, with a flexible start date.
Job description
Job Description
This is a ~12-week internship for summer 2027, onsite in Emeryville, CA, with a flexible start date.
We're working at every level of our platform to bring more frontier drugs to patients faster. We're building toward a vision where scientists and agents make better decisions and reach useful answers sooner. You'll work with engineers and scientists to build agentic systems that connect knowledge, computational tools, instruments, and laboratory work. Depending on the project, you might integrate tools into an agent workflow, improve a data pipeline, or build interfaces and visualizations for our scientists.
You're an engineer who wants to develop software that transforms the way our teams work with our discovery platform. You're comfortable with agentic coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor) and keep up with the newest technologies in this space. While prior expertise in biology or chemistry is a plus, strong software engineering skills and eagerness to learn matter more. As one of Octant's software engineering interns, you'll make an immediate and lasting impact while being mentored by experienced scientists and engineers.
This internship might be great for you if you:
- Are currently pursuing a BS, MS, or PhD, or completed a BS or MS within the past year, in a quantitative field (e.g., computer science, bioinformatics, applied math, or data science)
- Have experience building or working with agentic systems, LLM tool-use pipelines, or multi-step automated workflows, including prompt design and structured model outputs
- Have strong coding skills in at least one major language (Python, TypeScript, Rust, or similar)
- Can explain the design and tradeoffs behind code you build, including code developed with AI tools
- Show initiative through independent side projects or pursuits (software or otherwise)
- Can communicate results to both computational and experimental audiences
- Are comfortable with ambiguity and rapid iteration; our weekly cadence requires sound judgment with incomplete information rather than waiting for certainty
Requirements
- Currently pursuing a BS, MS, or PhD, or completed a BS or MS within the past year, in a quantitative field (e.g., computer science, bioinformatics, applied math, or data science)
- Experience building or working with agentic systems, LLM tool-use pipelines, or multi-step automated workflows, including prompt design and structured model outputs
- Strong coding skills in at least one major language (Python, TypeScript, Rust, or similar)
- Can explain the design and tradeoffs behind code you build, including code developed with AI tools
- Show initiative through independent side projects or pursuits (software or otherwise)
- Can communicate results to both computational and experimental audiences
- Comfortable with ambiguity and rapid iteration
Company overview
Octant Bio is a biotechnology company founded in 2017 and headquartered in Emeryville, California, that specializes in developing next-generation small molecule therapeutics for complex diseases. The company combines advanced cell engineering, high-throughput chemistry, and automation to engineer best-in-class drugs targeting rare diseases, oncology, and immunology. Octant's innovative Navigator platform utilizes synthetic biology, high-throughput experimentation, and AI/ML data analysis to understand and modulate how target proteins interact within cells, rather than just binding molecules to isolated proteins. This approach enables the company to tackle protein misfolding diseases that have proven intractable with conventional methods. With a team of experienced technologists and entrepreneurs, Octant has raised significant funding, including an $80 million Series B round, and is working on promising programs in rare disease and oncology. The company's mission focuses on scaling drug discovery through massive experimentation in human cells to unlock novel insights into disease mechanisms.