Senior Software Engineer, Data and Integrations
Elicit · Oakland, CA (or remote within US timezones)
About this role
**Senior Software Engineer, Data and Integrations** ## About Elicit Elicit is an AI research agent that helps scientists and decision-makers find, synthesise, and understand research. Pharma and biotech teams rely on it for systematic reviews and other work where the evidence has to hold up. We’re a public benefit corporation founded to radically improve reasoning for high-stakes decisions. Our engineering team is small and works in an AI-native way. ## Why this role exists Elicit is only as useful as the evidence underneath it. You’ll help build and maintain the scholarly search and data platform that brings together: - Scholarly literature - Clinical trials - Specialized scientific databases - Licensed publisher content - Customers’ private data You’ll turn these sources into usable, cited, agentic research workflows—while improving the distributed systems that power coverage, freshness, quality, reliability, and cost. ## What you’ll do - **Own Elicit’s scholarly search and data platform**: coverage, freshness, quality, reliability, and cost as the product and sources evolve. - **Turn needs into technical plans** in close collaboration with product, sales, and partners. - **Bring new evidence types into Elicit** and make them usable for LLM-based features while preserving structure, citations, and provenance. - **Build secure, rights-aware integrations** for enterprise customers and content partners (access, privacy, isolation, auditability)—often working directly with partner technical teams. - **Ship features end-to-end** across frontend, backend, and data with clear interfaces between layers. - **Operate what you build**: staged rollouts, monitoring, rollback plans, and keeping integrations from adding unnecessary complexity. - **Work on broader product features** beyond integrations, and help make the data platform easy for other engineers to build on. - **Use coding agents daily** and stay hands-on where stakes are high. ## What we’re looking for - **5+ years** of software engineering, including production systems you owned and architecture decisions you made. - **Strong Python** (used daily; interviews include live coding). TypeScript experience is expected; **React is a plus**. - Experience designing/debugging/tuning **distributed data pipelines** (Spark is especially useful; comparable experience counts). - **Solid SQL**, including partitioning, joins, columnar formats, and how data layout impacts performance and cost. - Experience integrating **messy external data**: APIs, bulk exports, file drops, changing schemas, rate limits, partial failures, overlapping records. - Strong focus on **data quality, entity resolution, provenance, and observability**, plus a plan for failure modes. - **User-facing features shipped end-to-end** (not only backend systems). - **Product judgment**: connect infrastructure work to what researchers can do; finish features across layers. - **At least 1 year** at an early or growth-stage company where you shaped the work. - Clear communication with engineers and non-engineers; share proposals early and explain trade-offs. - **Pragmatic use of coding agents**: faster without sacrificing quality. ## Location and travel - Office in **Oakland, CA** (in-person preferred if local) - **Remote is welcome**, with time zone overlap (between **GMT and GMT-8**) - Quarterly in-person team retreat (travel required) ## Benefits and perks - Flexible work (Oakland office or remote with overlap) - Fully covered
Listing freshness
CronJobs last confirmed this listing 57m ago. If its source stops confirming the opening for seven days, this page is removed from active inventory.