About Prima Mente

Prima Mente is a frontier biology AI lab. We generate our own data, build general-purpose biological foundation models, and translate discoveries into research and clinical outcomes. Our first goal is to tackle the brain: to deeply understand it, protect it from neurological disease, and enhance it in health. Our team of AI researchers, experimentalists, clinicians, and operators is based in London, San Francisco, and Dubai.

Role Focus – Senior Software Engineer, Backend & Cloud

You will design, build, and scale SaaS systems that bring biological foundation models to real users. Role split approximately 70% backend, 25% cloud, 5% frontend.

You will build products that support:

• Working with large biological datasets with heavy I/O and structured metadata

• Experiment lineage, artifact tracking, and model version history

• Tenant-aware access controls and role-scoped permissions

• Reproducible workflows that bridge research code and production services

You will work on turning complex model workflows into products that are usable, reliable, and observable in production.

Responsibilities

Backend & Application Services

You should think in terms of data models, invariants, and failure modes.

• Design and implement REST or gRPC APIs that power datasets, experiments, and user workflows

• Define service boundaries and evolve them as the system grows

• Design, migrate, and optimize schemas in an RDMS (PostgreSQL preferred)

• Implement authentication and tenant-level authorization controls

• Improve performance, query efficiency, and data integrity

• Add structured logging and metrics to support fast debugging

Cloud & Infrastructure

You should be comfortable creating and modifying cloud resources directly.

• Deploy and operate services in AWS or GCP

• Provision and configure compute, storage, and service-level networking

• Configure IAM roles with least-privilege access

• Containerize services with Docker

• Deploy and debug applications in Kubernetes

• Use infrastructure as code to manage environments (Terraform preferred)

• Improve monitoring and operational reliability

Frontend Engineering

You are expected to write production frontend code when required.

• Contribute to React / Next.js features when needed

• Integrate backend APIs cleanly with frontend surfaces

• Debug issues across UI, API, database, and cloud

• Maintain clear API contracts and system boundaries

Expected Growth

Month One

• Shipping meaningful backend and frontend production changes within weeks

• Understanding system architecture, data flows, and deployment patterns

• Making cloud and infrastructure updates as required

Month Three

• Own major backend services in the application layer

• Improve reliability, performance, and observability

• Independently deliver features spanning frontend, backend, and cloud

• Reduce operational friction through pragmatic engineering improvements

Who You Are

You want to build the infrastructure that makes frontier AI usable, reliable, and scalable.

We don’t expect you to check every box. Strong applicants have depth in some areas and curiosity to grow into others.

Ideal Background

• Strong backend development in Python, Go, or similar

• Experience designing and operating REST or gRPC APIs in production

• RDMS schema design and performance tuning (PostgreSQL preferred)

• Production experience in AWS or GCP

• Experience provisioning and deploying cloud resources

• Docker-based development

• Experience deploying services to Kubernetes

• Practical experience building and maintaining React applications

• Familiarity with infrastructure as code

• Experience using Terraform

Culture Insight

Prima Mente is a place where great people get to tackle great challenges together. We’re innately curious, fundamentally hands on and passionate about excellence.

Together we are building an environment where outstanding communication, scientific rigour and creative innovation come together to effect impact at pace.

Come build the world's frontier AI biology lab with us.

We arrange our lives so we can work in person as much as possible.