Staff Software Engineer, TuneLab

Job Summary

TuneLab has powerful underlying AI models and point solutions. The job now is to turn them into something a biotech startup can actually use: a coherent workflow, a clean product experience, and a SaaS offering that scales. You won't start from zero. There are working point solutions, trained models, and internal infrastructure to build on. Federated learning is a meaningful part of the work – letting biotech customers use Lilly's models without their data leaving their environment. Plenty else is yours to create from scratch.

We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to be one of the founding engineers on this team. This is an IC role with real scope. You'll own product end-to-end, set the technical direction, and make the architecture calls that decide how fast a small team can move. There's no tech lead above you to defer to and no architecture council to escalate to. You're the senior engineer in the room. You'll work shoulder-to-shoulder with product, design, data science, and report to the TuneLab Engineering Manager.

Key Responsibilities

Build the product

• Own product surfaces end-to-end–frontend, backend, data, integrations–whatever the problem requires. You don't hand off; you ship.
• Architect and build the application layer that wraps Lilly's AI models into reliable, cohesive workflows for biotech customers. Make a set of point solutions feel like a product.
• Make pragmatic technology decisions. Optimize for speed and quality. Pick boring tools when they work and reach for novel only when it pays.
• Stay deep in the code. This is a build role, not a review role.
• Set the engineering bar from scratch–code review, testing, release process, on-call. What you build becomes the team norm.

Lift the team

• Mentor other engineers as the team grows. Make them better at the job, not just better at this codebase.
• Partner with the Engineering Manager on hiring. You're an interviewer and a recruiter–you sell the role and you hold the bar.
• Pressure-test the roadmap with the PM and design lead. You have product taste and you use it. You'll push back when a spec is wrong and find the simpler way to ship.
• Spot the things nobody owns and either pick them up or assign them clearly. The team's gaps are your problem.

Operate effectively inside a large company

• Navigate enterprise infrastructure, security, and compliance requirements without disrupting development progress.
• Work with Lilly IT and internal platform teams to leverage existing capabilities rather than rebuild them.
• Represent engineering in conversations with external biotech partners when it matters. You can speak credibly to a CTO on the other side.

Minimum Requirements

• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with a track record of shipping SaaS products used by real customers.
• Demonstrated experience operating as a senior or staff IC on a small team–not just as a senior IC on a large one.
• Qualified applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Lilly will not provide support for or sponsor work authorization or visas for this role, including but not limited to F-1 CPT, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, J-1, H-1B, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, or L-1.

Additional Skills/Preferences

Technical depth

• Strong full-stack fundamentals. You're comfortable owning a feature from database schema to UI and have an opinion about each layer.
• Solid API design and integration experience. You know how to build systems that connect things cleanly.
• Real frontend craft: you can design and ship interfaces that feel right, not just functional. You sweat the empty states and the error states.
• Cloud experience and comfort with modern deployment practices.
• Enough familiarity with AI/ML to make good integration decisions. You don't need to be a data scientist, but you need to understand what you're wrapping and why it matters.
• Always learning. You want the why behind an ask, not just the what, and you don't let momentum decide a solution for you.
• Hands-on experience building LLM-powered features. You understand the practical challenges: reliability, evals, context management, and when not to use AI.
• Comfortable with AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.). You know how to get the most out of them.

Product instincts

• You think about the user, not just the system.
• You've built software that external customers actually paid for and relied on.
• You've simplified complex backend capabilities into clean, usable product experiences.
• You ask "what problem are we solving?" before "how do we build it?"
• You can hold your own with a PM on what we should build, not just how to build it.
• Focused on delivering business value, not just shipping features. You'll work directly with internal stakeholders and customers when it helps the team.

Startup mentality

• You've worked in environments where the roadmap wasn't fully defined and the team was small, and you thrived.
• Self-sufficient. You unblock yourself and figure things out.
• You create structure and process when needed, but you know when to skip it.
• You take ownership broadly. If something isn't working, you fix it rather than wait for someone else to.
• Startup experience matters here more than big-tech tenure.

How you lead

• You lead with judgment. You don't need a manager title to set direction.
• Low ego, high standards. You'll learn from a more junior engineer who knows the area better, and you'll push back firmly when you don't agree.
• You communicate clearly across technical and non-technical audiences.

Additional Preferences

• Experience in life sciences, pharma, or health tech.
• Background building B2B SaaS products.
• Prior experience at a startup, or as an early engineer in an internal startup within a larger company.
• Experience as a technical co-founder or one of the first engineers on a product that found users.