Merge Labs
Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead
$225K–$305K
San Francisco Bay Area · On-site · Staff · Full-time · Posted Oct 8, 2026
About the job
Own and deliver software spanning experimental applications, instrument integrations, data systems, and infrastructure, while guiding technical decisions and improving reliability for research workflows.
What you'll do
- Design, implement, deploy, and operate critical software; translate experimental needs into milestones and acceptance criteria.
- Build interfaces and reliable high-volume data workflows; address integration, concurrency, performance, and recovery challenges.
- Improve testing, observability, and releases; review code, mentor peers, and communicate technical tradeoffs.
What they ask for
- Record of personally delivering substantial software systems and supporting them after release.
- Strong coding and debugging skills, sound software fundamentals, and ability to learn unfamiliar parts of a stack.
- Experience making architecture decisions across multiple components and explaining tradeoffs.
- Good judgment about reliability, data integrity, performance, and operational failure modes.
Nice to have
- Experience with scientific software, robotics, instrumentation, imaging, lab automation, or software connected to physical systems.
- Python, C++, Rust, Matlab, scientific data pipelines, high-throughput systems, desktop applications, or people management experience.
Pay
$225K – $305K USD base salary
Tools
Python, C++, Rust, Matlab
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative