FlowDeploy
Bioinformatics pipelines in the cloud
Bioinformatics Engineer
About the role
About FlowDeploy
FlowDeploy builds dev tools for bioinformatics, and we're looking for a bioinformatics engineer. Our core product is a platform to run bioinformatics pipelines and manage data.
We're a very small team, and we plan to stay small until we have strong product-market fit. We're funded by Y Combinator and other notable investors, FlowDeploy is generating revenue, and we can keep going for years without raising additional funding.
What we value
- Working autonomously to maximize impact rather than following orders. I think a former or future founder would thrive in this environment.
- Building and running quick experiments, rather than building huge features without user feedback.
- Comfortability with transparency and openness, even if it might help potential competitors in the short term.
What you might work on
Bioinformatics engineering
- Improving our integration with bioinformatics pipelining languages like Nextflow and Snakemake.
- Infrastructure for pipeline execution. This is mostly executed through AWS Batch.
- Supporting our customers and their bioinformatics pipelines.
Typical software engineering
- Our core API. This is currently written with Express/Node with a Postgres database.
- Improving our data management. Most data is stored in S3, with metadata in a Postgres database.
- The React app for launching, monitoring, and sharing bioinformatics pipelines and data.
Requirements
- You have experience with infrastructure for bioinformatics pipelines.
- You have started a project from scratch. That could be a project you're working on now, a company you founded, or a side project that you built.
- You have strong written communication skills.
- You know how to navigate the tension between "moving fast and breaking things" and working towards validated infrastructure.
Nice to have
- You have full-stack experience with relevant tech. For this product, that's Python or similar, React or similar, AWS or similar, and Node.js/Express + Postgres or similar.
- You have worked in both academia and industry.
Compensation
Cash: around $76k-112k. Equity: 0.75%-1%.
We increase compensation for more experience, since it's reasonable to expect this correlates with an increase in skill.
We pay for 100% of health insurance, which includes location-specific plans from Aetna, BlueCross BlueShield, and Kaiser Permanente. We also offer a mix of other funded (e.g. dental, vision, disability) and available (e.g. hospital, accident) insurance.
If you're working in-person: we have a great office space with free snacks, drinks, and lunch.
About the interview
There are five steps to our interview process:
- Application (you are here!)
- Non-technical first call (15 minute video call)
- Technical interview (45 minute video call)
- Trial day (one day)
- Offer
Non-technical first call
The first call is a fifteen minute video call with Noah and Keegan. If we're on a call together, it's because we think you could be a great fit; we'll use this call to ask you non-technical questions and we encourage you to do the same.
Technical interview
If we all want to move forward, the next step is a technical interview with Noah. This a mix of product thinking, system design, and coding. For the coding portion, try to follow the patterns of a language you already know – but there's no need to use exact syntax.
Trial day
The final stage of the interview process is a paid "trial day" based on PostHog's SuperDay. This is an opportunity for us to see how you actually work and for you to experience working with us.
We understand that scheduling a full day can be challenging, so we're willing to split the trial day into two half-day sessions. Unfortunately, we only consider candidates who are willing to do the trial day.
You'll usually work on a feature that we've already built. The goal of this day is to figure out if we like working together by working together – not to release a new feature. We'd recommend spending the vast majority of your time on work rather than meeting people, because our decision is mostly based on output.
Offer
If we're excited to work with you, we'll make an offer! We aim to make a decision within 48 hours of the trial day.
The entire process takes one week to four weeks to schedule and complete. If there's a timeline to which you'd like to adhere, let us know – we'll do our best to fit your schedule.
About FlowDeploy
FlowDeploy builds developer tools for bioinformaticians. Developer tools for computational biology aren't really a thing yet, so we're one of the first companies building in the space. Our core product is a platform to run bioinformatics pipelines and manage data. For a taste of the product, you can sign up and try the "Snakemake tutorial" template pipeline.
I don't think anyone has figured out bioinformatics platforms yet. As a result, the vast majority of organizations still build in-house platforms for running their computational biology pipelines. Many of those in-house platforms aren't allocated the resources they need to succeed, which slows down researchers and increases wasted cloud computing spend.
FlowDeploy has the potential to be a foundational component of in-house bioinformatics platforms – or, for some early-stage teams, it's already used as the entire platform.
We're a very small team, and we plan to stay small until we have strong product-market fit. Unlike other bioinformatics platforms, none of our revenue comes from consulting. We're funded by Y Combinator and other notable investors, FlowDeploy is generating revenue, and we can keep going for years without raising additional funding.
