Staff Data Engineer, Lab Data Platform

We've built a best-in-industry dataset for mammalian cell line development: thousands of antibodies, plasmids, genetic elements, pools and clones, each linked to the measurements that show how they actually performed in the lab. That data already powers Kernel's design recommendations and our predictive models, and it's a big part of why partners choose us.

Now we want to take it to the next level of maturity. That means capturing every instrument's data from every experiment the same way, at higher throughput, continuously improving in quality and depth of analysis, fully traceable to the designs and conditions that produced it and ready for the next generation of models. We're looking for one person to own that path from bench to warehouse to model: half data engineer, half software engineer, with your feet in the lab.

About the Role

• Standardize how the lab captures data. Sit with our cell line development, analytics, and molecular biology teams to define how samples, conditions and measurements are recorded, then build the ingestion tooling that makes the right way the easy way.
• Own the lab data platform end to end. Design and run the pipelines that move data from instruments, our ELN/LIMS and bench workflows into our warehouse (BigQuery) and into Kernel, with quality checks, lineage and versioning built in. Embrace FAIR principles in data stewardship.
• Model the biology and the process. Build schemas that link a molecule design to its constructs, the cell pools and clones that carry them, the bioprocess, and every titer, quality, and stability measurement taken along the way.
• Feed the models and the product. Deliver clean, ML-ready datasets to our modeling and computational biology team, and ship APIs and services that surface lab results inside Kernel and to KernelAI, our agentic design assistant.
• Enable the science. Build deterministic and agentic reporting and analysis tools and dashboards side by side with computational and data scientists to close the loop from data back to design input.

About you

• You have 8+ years building production data systems (5+ for Senior), and you've owned a data platform's architecture, not just its pipelines.
• You write strong Python and SQL, and you're comfortable shipping backend services and APIs, not only batch jobs.
• You've worked in or alongside a biotech wet lab, and you know why lab data gets messy. You'd rather walk into the lab and watch an experiment than guess at requirements.
• You can take an ambiguous, first-of-its-kind problem and turn it into a system scientists actually adopt.

We're a small team where software engineers and biologists share a floor, and your work shows up in real experiments within weeks, not quarters. We value velocity, autonomy and concrete outcomes over process. If you've ever wished lab data just made sense, come build the system that makes it so.