Software Engineer

Who we are looking for

We're seeking a Software Engineer to join our team in Sydney, Australia. Remote and visa sponsorship options available.

As a Software Engineer on our team, you'll enable and dramatically accelerate this future through software and data. You’ll become part of a major industrial revolution happening around the world today. You’ll write software to automate data capture and analysis, program scientific robots to turn difficult physical tasks in the lab into rapid, fully reproducible systems, and enable every team member at Vow to do massively leveraged creative work every day.
You have

• You have at least 2 years of software engineering experience shipping code in production tech stacks, including in mission-critical and large-scale systems.
• A strong command of any of the following: JavaScript, TypeScript, Python or SQL
• Experience in Linux server environments and AWS cloud environments
• Formal degree qualifications are not required, but if you are self-taught, then you have evidence of commensurate industry experience and demonstrated a desire to master your craft.
• You’re kind, curious, take pride in your work, and enjoy learning new things.
• You’re product and user obsessed. You constantly think about the perspectives of end-users and your impact on the mission even when it’s not asked of you. Your users feel heard when they provide feedback, or better yet, when you actively seek it out.
• You’re able to identify and make pragmatic tradeoffs that incorporate cost/benefit into every key decision, rather than aiming for perfection or chasing rabbit holes.
• You effectively communicate in clear language suitable for your audience, in both written and verbal communication.

Bonus if you have

• Previous hardware and electronics experience, in a personal or professional setting
• Previous lab experience, ideally in the field of biology
• Previous relevant experience in automation & robotics
• A love of food, cooking or experience in a culinary setting

You will

• Architect, build and scale software as part of a technology stack that spans everything from biology to hardware to backend software to frontend apps.
• Work in a modern stack built on TypeScript, Python, PostgreSQL, and AWS.
• Manage and run the entire software development cycle, including customer interviews, problem definition, architecture, prototyping, testing, training, documentation, and driving key metrics. As you gain experience and earn the trust of team members and stakeholders alike, you’ll be entrusted to define the product and technology roadmap in your areas of expertise.
• Enthusiastically tackle any part of the stack as needed for the successful shipping of an engineering project, including hardware, firmware, data engineering, and frontend, even if it means learning a new skill or being out of your comfort zone.
• Review code and work materials of your fellow engineers, and mentor more junior engineers.
• Meaningfully contribute improvements to our culture and organisational processes.
• Learn about biology, hardware, design and culinary from our multidisciplinary team and leverage these balanced perspectives in your work.

What success looks like

In the first month, you’ll get to know your team and manager, work alongside scientists to understand their lab challenges, learn the core science of cultured meat, and delve into our tech stack to immediately ship impactful changes to our two key automation areas -- data pipelines and robotic automation. You could be optimising an ML model for cell viability detection, programming a robotic liquid handling to automate away a tedious pipetting protocol, or solving a UI/UX pain point to make life delightful for a cultured meat scientist.

Over the next few months, you’ll establish and scale data pipelines that pull from a fleet of lab sensors and perform image processing and statistical analysis, program robotic plate handling systems for end-to-end automated cell line screening, or build modern React apps to allow scientists to design experiments to be run by high-throughput robots.
The team

You will work directly with our Head of Engineering Soroush Pour, with our multidisciplinary Engineering team of Software, Mechatronics, IT and R&D engineers, and cross-functionally across Vow with cell biologists, food inventors and world-class operators.

The benefits

• Competitive salary and equity in the company.
• Active transparency to let you effectively contribute to every facet of the business.
• An awesome converted warehouse office, complete with a glass-walled lab, free snacks, a coffee machine and cafe, and a DIY workshop for all hands-on projects.
• A huge focus on career support and growth, including weekly 1:1s and ongoing feedback , as well as access to learning and development opportunities (e.g., lunch and learn events, access to webinars and conferences, and networking with our investor community)
• An inclusive community and culture, in a welcoming office, complete with multiple office dogs (... please bring your dogs!).
• 12 weeks paid parental leave and unlimited personal leave.
• Relocation budget for interstate or overseas individuals for you and your family.

Vow’s mission is to make food products for everyone, and we mean everyone. To do that well we need a workforce that’s representative of the people we serve. We celebrate multiple approaches and points of view, we are inclusive and we believe diversity drives innovation - so we’re building a culture to match. Uniqueness is powerful - be yourself and come as you are.