What the role involves
About Novaflow
Novaflow is the AI data analyst for biology labs. Analytics is the bottleneck for scientific discovery. Biologists have to outsource analysis to expensive bioinformaticians or core services and wait weeks or months for results. We're solving this by putting analysis directly back into the hands of researchers, allowing them to go from raw data to publication-ready insights and visualizations in days instead of months. We're well-funded, growing extremely fast, and backed by leading investors including Y Combinator and BioRender.
About the Role
We're hiring a Founding Backend Engineer to build the infrastructure and services that make the whole platform work. APIs, cloud infrastructure, databases, data pipelines for moving large genomics datasets through the system. You'll make the architecture decisions that determine how this thing scales.
This is a high-agency, high-ownership role. You'll work directly with the founders on system design and have a major say in how we build our engineering team and processes. Biology background is not required. You just need to be a strong engineer who can build reliable systems.
This role is in-person at our San Francisco office. The founding team works side by side every day to make fast decisions and ship.
What You'll Work On
Build and maintain APIs and backend services in Python, Go, or similar
Set up and manage cloud infrastructure on AWS or GCP
Work with SQL and NoSQL databases, optimize queries, design data models
Build data pipelines and integrations with third-party services
Manage data infrastructure (storage, compute) for large-scale workloads
Set up CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and observability
Help build the engineering team and establish how we work
Requirements
Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)
2+ years building and running backend services in production
Strong with cloud platforms, Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes
Deep SQL knowledge and data modeling experience
Proficient in Python and Node.js for APIs and services
Experience with microservices, service-to-service communication, and API design
Familiar with CI/CD, monitoring, and keeping production systems healthy
Good communicator who can explain technical decisions clearly
Nice to Have
Experience with computational biology or scientific computing workloads
Go experience
Experience with event-driven architectures or message queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS)
Startup background
Previous startup experience (prior experience either working for or founding a startup)
Why Join Us?
Competitive salary and meaningful equity as a founding team member
401(k) with company match
Unlimited PTO + federal holidays
Monthly health and wellness stipend
Meals covered when you're in the office (lunch daily, dinner when you're working late)
Team offsites and company events
If you're curious about being a founder one day, this is your front-row seat. You'll work side by side with the founders and have full visibility into product strategy, customer conversations, and fundraising as we scale.
About Novaflow
Novaflow is the AI data analyst for biology labs. -- Bioinformatics data analysis is a time-consuming and expensive process for scientists. With Novaflow, life scientists can upload experimental data, ask questions in plain English, and get instant, publication-ready plots, giving them results in minutes instead of months. Researchers at leading institutions like UCSF, Mount Sinai, UC Berkeley, and Harvard are already using Novaflow in their labs.
Full Novaflow profile