Backend Software Engineer; Python; Senior f​/m

Join to apply for the Backend Software Engineer (Python) (Senior+) (f / * / m) role at Cradle
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This is Cradle

Proteins are the molecular machines of life, used for many therapeutic, diagnostic, chemical, agricultural and food applications. Designing and optimizing proteins requires a lot of expert knowledge and manual effort, through the use of custom computational and biological tools. Machine learning is revolutionising this space, by enabling high‑fidelity protein models. At Cradle we offer a software platform for AI‑guided discovery and optimisation of proteins, allowing biologists to design proteins faster and  are already used by clients across pharma, biotech, agritech, foodtech, and academia.

We're an experienced team of around 70 people and have enough funding for multiple years of runway. We are distributed across two main locations, Zurich and Amsterdam, and focus on building the best possible team culture.

We offer competitive salary, a generous equity stake for full‑time employees, and a wide range of benefits and career progression opportunities.

We’re looking for backend software engineers who are excited to design a platform for optimising biological systems. Be ready to witness first hand what happens when you leave bits and bytes behind and solve challenges with nature’s constraints and complexity.

• Design and develop a service‑oriented decoupled web application that exposes advanced machine‑learning models to scientific end users.
• Architect the storage and manipulation of biological sequence data, efficiently representing the full variety of biochemicals.
• Architect APIs for interacting with machine‑learning models, including versioning access over time.
• Provide technical leadership for a high‑quality software engineering process.
• Collaborate with biologists, machine‑learning experts, and scientists to understand and solve domain challenges.

• Extensive industry experience developing backend systems in a modern cloud environment.
• Proficiency with Python and its ecosystem (FastAPI, uvicorn, ruff, pyright, etc.).
• Experience with databases and big‑data systems.
• Experience with production systems for machine‑learning applications.
• Experience building containerised backend systems (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience with highly‑available distributed cloud systems.
• Strong teamwork, communication skills, and a positive, friendly work environment.

Please be aware that scammers are posing as us. We only communicate via  email addresses, only make job offers after meeting you in person at our office in Zurich or Amsterdam, and never ask you to pay for anything during the interview process.

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Mid‑Senior level

Full‑time

Engineering and Information Technology

Biotechnology