Element Biosciences
Director, Software Engineering
San Diego - Headquarters · Director · Part-time
Stay score
odds of building a lasting career here
Sponsors, but it's cap-subject — you still face the weighted lottery (~61% per draw at Level IV). Good if you win; have a cap-exempt backup on your list.
Lottery odds assume a STEM candidate.
Personalize to your clock →H-1B wage level
the lottery is wage-weighted — each level is one more entry
$11,693 more — $191,693 — moves this role to Level IV and 4 lottery entries. That figure is inside the range the employer already advertised.
Based on the DOL prevailing wage for this occupation and worksite, a base salary of $191,693 would place this position at wage Level IV. That figure is within the posted range, and I'd like to target it. This role classifies under "Software Developers" for prevailing-wage purposes.
DOL prevailing wage, 2026-27 wage year · Software Developers (15-1252) · San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA. Wage level is derived by USCIS from the offered wage, occupation and worksite; the occupation shown is inferred from the job title.
Employer immigration record
from this employer's Department of Labor filings
Files H-1B transfers
Sourced from Department of Labor LCA, PERM and prevailing-wage disclosure data. Employer matching is by name, so figures may be split across an employer's legal entities. Absence of a filing means none appears in our copy of the data, not that none exists.
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About the role
- We have built a highly efficient product-driven organization where employees can learn, grow, and thrive in a challenging but encouraging environment.
- Your team's surface area spans frontend, backend, cloud services, instrument software, CLI/API, and agentic tooling -- across customer-facing products and internal tools that keep the rest of the organization moving fast.
- Our engineers use Cursor, Claude, and other AI tooling daily, and we're actively rolling out agentic SDLC workflows across the software function.
Responsibilities
- Lead, mentor, and grow a team of software developers spanning frontend, backend, cloud, and instrument software
- Own hiring, 1:1s, performance reviews, career development, and resourcing decisions for the team
- Manage team budget, capacity planning, and cross-team dependencies; partner with peer leaders across Informatics, AI, Product, Hardware, and Chemistry
- Drive architecture and design for customer-facing products and internal tooling; run design reviews and set the bar for production-grade code, testing, and observability
- Partner with product owners, chemistry, hardware, and adjacent software teams to translate multi-omic workflows into scalable, performant software
- Prototype quickly with AI tools to validate ideas, pressure-test specs, and de-risk approaches before they reach the team
- Support both research-market and regulated software development within your team's scope
- Own end-to-end delivery for one or more product areas -- from requirements through deployment and sustaining
- Own or oversee design controls, verification and validation documentation, risk analysis, and traceability for regulated products (IEC 62304, ISO 13485, IVDR, FDA 21 CFR Part 820)
- Partner with regulatory affairs and QMS teams to support audits, inspections, and submissions
Requirements
- List amount of travel required or anticipated, if any.
Nice to have
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Bioengineering, or related field (advanced degree preferred)
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years directly managing engineering teams
- Track record shipping production-grade software across the full stack -- frontend, backend, cloud services, and workflow orchestration
- Daily fluency with AI coding assistants (Cursor, Claude, or similar) and demonstrated experience introducing or scaling agentic SDLC workflows within a team
- Experience shipping software that spans instrumentation, cloud SaaS, and CLI/API tooling
- Strong analytical, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment while balancing IC contribution and team leadership
- Experience with life sciences, multi-omic, DNA sequencing, or scientific instrumentation software
Compensation
- $180,000 - $254,000
- In addition to base compensation noted above, you will be eligible for stock options, discretionary annual bonus, no cost health insurance plans, 401k with company match, and flexible paid time off.
- Please note: Base compensation will depend on multiple factors, including geographic location, qualifications, and experience.
Benefits
- Education and Experience:
- In addition to base compensation noted above, you will be eligible for stock options, discretionary annual bonus, no cost health insurance plans, 401k with company match, and flexible paid time off.
Company info
- At Element Biosciences, we are passionate about our mission to empower the scientific community with more freedom and flexibility to accelerate our collective impact on humanity.
- We are committed to scientific integrity, collegiality, honesty, objectivity, and openness.
- Strong analytical, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills; comfortable presenting to executives, customers, and technical stakeholders
This listing is sourced directly from Element Biosciences's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.