Senior Software Engineer, Bioinformatics

Company Description

Guardant Health is a leading precision oncology company focused on guarding wellness and giving every person more time free from cancer. Founded in 2012, Guardant® is transforming patient care and accelerating new cancer therapies by providing critical insights into what drives disease through its advanced blood and tissue tests, real-world data and AI analytics. Guardant tests help improve outcomes across all stages of care, including screening to find cancer early, monitoring for recurrence in early-stage cancer, and treatment selection for patients with advanced cancer. For more information, visit  guardanthealth.com  and follow the company on  LinkedIn ,  X (Twitter)  and  Facebook .

Position Summary:

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Bioinformatics to design, develop, and maintain scalable software solutions supporting bioinformatics, life sciences, and clinical diagnostic applications. This role is ideal for an experienced software engineer who combines strong full-stack development skills with an interest in applying modern software engineering and AI-assisted development practices to complex scientific and clinical workflows.

The successful candidate will be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment, collaborating with geographically distributed and cross-functional teams, and building high-quality software where reliability, traceability, and maintainability are essential.

Key Responsibilities:

* Design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain robust software applications and services supporting bioinformatics and clinical workflows.
* Build scalable backend services and APIs using Python and modern web frameworks such as Django and FastAPI.
* Develop responsive and maintainable user interfaces using modern frontend technologies such as React.
* Design and optimize relational data models and database solutions using PostgreSQL.
* Architect, deploy, and operate applications and services in AWS environments.
* Apply sound software engineering practices including automated testing, code reviews, CI/CD, observability, security, and infrastructure automation.
* Partner with bioinformatics scientists, computational biologists, product managers, quality teams, and other stakeholders to translate scientific and business requirements into reliable software solutions.
* Develop software capable of supporting complex scientific datasets, analytical workflows, and computational pipelines.
* Use modern AI-assisted software development tools to improve engineering productivity, including code generation, code review, testing, debugging, technical documentation, and developer workflows.
* Evaluate emerging AI development tools and establish effective practices for their responsible use within the software development lifecycle.
* Produce clear technical documentation, architecture specifications, design documents, and operational procedures.
* Contribute to architectural decisions and help establish software development standards and engineering best practices.
* Troubleshoot complex production issues and drive root-cause analysis and long-term corrective solutions.
* Work effectively across multiple time zones and with geographically distributed engineering, scientific, and business teams.
* Mentor other engineers and contribute to the technical growth of the broader engineering organization.

Required Qualifications:

* Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
* 5+ years of professional software development experience, with significant hands-on development experience using Python.
* Strong experience developing production applications using Python web frameworks such as Django, FastAPI, or similar technologies.
* Experience developing modern web applications using React, JavaScript/TypeScript, HTML, and CSS.
* Strong experience with relational databases, particularly PostgreSQL, including schema design, queries, performance optimization, and data integrity.
* Hands-on experience developing, deploying, and supporting applications in AWS.
* Strong understanding of RESTful APIs, distributed systems, service-oriented architectures, and modern application design principles.
* Experience with automated testing, source control, code review, CI/CD, and modern DevOps practices.
* Demonstrated experience using AI-enabled software engineering tools for activities such as coding, testing, debugging, code review, and documentation.
* Strong problem-solving and analytical skills with the ability to work on complex technical problems with limited supervision.
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
* Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, evolving environment and effectively manage multiple priorities.
* Demonstrated ability to collaborate successfully with geographically distributed and cross-functional teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

* Experience developing software in life sciences, biotechnology, genomics, healthcare, or clinical diagnostics.
* Familiarity with bioinformatics workflows, genomic data, computational pipelines, or scientific computing environments.
* Experience developing software within a regulated environment, particularly systems subject to FDA requirements or other healthcare or life-sciences quality regulations.
* Familiarity with software development practices supporting regulated products, including requirements traceability, design controls, verification and validation, change control, and documentation.
* Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
* Experience with AWS services such as ECS/EKS, Lambda, RDS, S3, CloudWatch, IAM, and related cloud infrastructure.
* Experience with infrastructure-as-code technologies such as Terraform or AWS CDK.
* Experience designing systems that process large scientific or clinical datasets.
* Familiarity with data privacy, security, and compliance considerations associated with clinical or healthcare data.

What Success Looks Like:

In this role, you will combine strong software engineering fundamentals with an understanding of scientific and clinical workflows to deliver reliable, scalable applications. You will be expected to operate with a high degree of ownership, collaborate effectively across technical and scientific disciplines, and continuously identify ways to improve software quality and engineering productivity.

You will also help the organization thoughtfully adopt modern AI-enabled development practices while maintaining the engineering rigor, documentation, and quality standards required for software supporting life sciences and clinical applications.

AI & Digital Fluency

- Demonstrate curiosity, sound judgment, and the ability to critically evaluate and responsibly leverage AI-enabled tools in accordance with company policies, ethical standards, and regulatory requirements to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of work.

Hybrid Work Model: This section is applicable to onsite employees who are eligible for hybrid work location as specified by management and related policies.   Guardant has defined days for in-person/onsite collaboration and work-from-home days for individual-focused time. All U.S. employees who live within 50 miles of a Guardant facility will be required to be onsite on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. We have found aligning our scheduled in-office days allows our teams to do the best work and creates the focused thinking time our innovative work requires. At Guardant, our work model has created flexibility for better work-life balance while keeping teams connected to advance our science for our patients.

The annualized base salary ranges for the primary location and any additional locations are listed below. This range does not include benefits or, if applicable, bonus, commission, or equity. Each candidate’s compensation offer will be based on multiple factors including, but not limited to, geography, experience, education, job-related skills, job duties, and business need.

Primary Location: Palo Alto, CA
Primary Location Base Pay Range: $150,300 - $206,700
Other US Location(s) Base Pay Range: $127,755 - $175,695
If the role is performed in Colorado, the pay range for this job is: $135,270 - $186,030
Employee may be required to lift routine office supplies and use office equipment. Majority of the work is performed in a desk/office environment; however, there may be exposure to high noise levels, fumes, and biohazard material in the laboratory environment. Ability to sit for extended periods of time.

Guardant Health is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our hiring processes for candidates with disabilities, long-term conditions, mental health conditions, or sincerely held religious beliefs. If you need support, please reach out to  [email protected]

A background screening including criminal history is required for this role. GH will consider qualified applicants with criminal arrest or conviction histories in a manner consistent with applicable law including but not limited to the LA County Fair Chance Policies and the Fair Chance Act (Gov. Code Section 12952).

Guardant Health is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

To learn more about the information collected when you apply for a position at Guardant Health, Inc. and how it is used, please review our  Privacy Notice for Job Applicants .

Please visit our career page at:  http://www.guardanthealth.com/jobs/