This is Cradle

Proteins are the molecular machines of life, used for many therapeutic, diagnostic, chemical, agricultural and food applications. Designing and optimizing proteins takes a lot of expert knowledge and manual effort, through the use of custom computational and biological tools.

Machine learning is revolutionizing this space, by enabling high-fidelity protein models. At Cradle, we offer a software platform for AI-guided discovery and optimization of proteins, so that biologists can design proteins faster and at scale. We are already used by clients across biopharma, biotech, agri-tech, food-tech, and academia.

We're an experienced team of around 90 people. We've built many successful products before and have enough funding for multiple years of runway. We are distributed across two main locations, Zurich and Amsterdam, and are focused on building the best possible team culture.

We offer our employees a very competitive salary, a generous equity stake in the company and a wide range of benefits and career progression opportunities.

What we are looking for

We're looking for backend software engineers who are excited to peek out of the virtual world and join us on designing a platform for optimizing biological systems! Be ready to witness first hand what happens when you leave the bits and bytes behind and try to solve challenges with nature’s constraints and complexity.

Responsibilities

As a backend software engineer, you will be responsible for designing and developing a service-oriented decoupled web application, which exposes our advanced machine learning models to scientific end users.

For example, this means:

• Architecting the ways in which we manipulate and store biological sequence data, e.g. with consideration for how to efficiently represent the full variety of biochemicals. (Prior biological experience is nice but not required.)
• Architecting the APIs across which we interact with machine learning models, e.g. with consideration for how to version access over time.
• Providing technical leadership for a high-quality software engineering process.
• Collaborating with biologists, machine learning experts, and scientists alike, and becoming skilled in working in their domains.

Skillset

We are looking for some selection of the following skills:

• Extensive industry experience in developing back-end systems in a modern cloud environment.
• The Python programming language and its ecosystem (FastAPI, uv, ruff, pyright, …).
• Databases and big data systems.
• Production systems for machine learning applications.
• Building containerized backend systems. (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Highly-available distributed cloud systems.
• You are kind and work well in teams. We look for team players and excellent communicators who contribute to a positive and friendly working environment.

Our commitment to inclusive hiring

Cradle evaluates all candidates based on merit, regardless of sex, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background, or any other aspect of identity. We maintain zero tolerance for discrimination and actively encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.

AI disclosure

Cradle uses an applicant tracking system that includes basic AI-assisted features which may generate scores or rankings based on how applications match a job description. These outputs are not used to make or meaningfully influence hiring decisions — all candidates are evaluated through a thorough, human-led review by our recruiting team.

A notice about recruitment scams

Please be aware that scammers are posing as us in order to get your personal details or money. We only communicate via @cradle.bio email addresses, we only make job offers after having met you in person at our office in Zurich or Amsterdam, and we never ask you to pay for anything during the interview process.