Senior Software Engineer, Backend and Cloud - Product

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.