Staff Software Engineer (Core Systems) - Robotics & Life Sciences | Complex Distributed Systems
London hybrid, 3 days per week
£130,000 to £170,000
Go/Python |Optimisation |Distributed Systems | Kubernetes |Event-Driven Architecture
Staff Software Engineer - We're working with a technology company building the software and robotics platform used to automate laboratory work across pharma and biotech.
Their technology is directly supporting work across drug discovery, diagnostics and scientific research. Over the last year they've rebuilt their core platform from scratch and are now entering the next phase: building significantly more sophisticated functionality for larger pharma and biotech customers.
The Product, Engineering and Design organisation is deliberately lean and flat, giving senior engineers genuine influence over architecture, engineering standards and what gets built next.
As a Staff Software Engineer, you'll work on the core systems responsible for orchestrating physical laboratory automation. This isn't standard backend engineering. You'll tackle problems around scheduling, resource allocation, routing and optimisation, building distributed systems that have to coordinate physical resources reliably and in real-time.
The platform runs Kubernetes at the edge, where compute is constrained rather than effectively unlimited, creating a very different set of engineering trade-offs to traditional cloud SaaS.
You'll remain deeply hands-on while providing technical leadership across the team, owning difficult architectural problems, improving engineering quality and helping other senior engineers deliver complex systems.
What will the Staff Software Engineer do?
- Design and build the core scheduling, routing and resource-allocation systems behind the platform
- Solve complex optimisation problems using constraint modelling and solver technologies
- Build and evolve distributed, event-driven systems operating in real time
- Work across Python and Go as core product logic increasingly moves towards Go
- Design systems running on Kubernetes within constrained edge environments
- Own significant areas of technical architecture and drive decisions through ambiguity
- Raise the quality bar across design, implementation, testing and production ownership
- Mentor senior engineers and help establish stronger engineering practices across the team
- Work closely with Product and customers to ensure complex technical solutions translate into real scientific outcomes
What will the Staff Software Engineer bring?
- Strong software engineering fundamentals with significant backend and distributed systems experience
- Experience with Go and/or Python, with an appetite to work across both
- Genuine experience with optimisation modelling, scheduling, routing, constraint solving or resource allocation
- Exposure to solver technologies such as Google OR-Tools, Gurobi or similar
- Strong event-driven architecture experience using technologies such as Kafka, NATS JetStream or equivalent
- Comfort working with graph-based problems, algorithms and complex system modelling
- Experience with Kubernetes and distributed production environments
- A track record of taking technically difficult problems through to working products, not just research or modelling
- Staff-level technical leadership skills, with the ability to influence architecture and raise the standard of engineers around you
This is an unusual opportunity for a Staff Software Engineer who enjoys genuinely difficult computer science problems but still wants to see their work shipped into the real world.
You'll join a small, high-autonomy engineering organisation immediately after a major platform rebuild, with the opportunity to define core technical systems that directly support drug discovery, diagnostics and life sciences research.
Staff Software Engineer (Core Systems) - Robotics & Life Sciences | Complex Distributed Systems
London hybrid, 3 days per week
£130,000 to £170,000
Go/Python |Optimisation |Distributed Systems | Kubernetes |Event-Driven Architecture
Burns Sheehan Ltd will consider applications based only on skills and ability and will not discriminate on any grounds.
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Staff Software Engineer (Core Systems) - Robotics employer: Burns Sheehan Limited
Join a dynamic and innovative HealthTech startup in London, where you'll have the opportunity to take ownership of data pipelines and make a tangible impact on healthcare solutions. With a strong focus on employee growth, a collaborative work culture, and the chance to work with cutting-edge AI technologies, this role offers not just a job, but a meaningful career path in a fast-paced environment. Enjoy competitive compensation, equity options, and the satisfaction of contributing to a mission-driven company that values your expertise and initiative.
