Principal/Senior Software Engineer

About Vow

Vow is a food company - a very different one. We’re creating real meat products from animal cells instead of the animal itself.

We’re bringing together cutting edge innovations in science, engineering, culinary and design to make sustainable food that’s both irresistible and available to billions of people worldwide.

Position

We are seeking an experienced Software Engineer to join the team. Visa sponsorship options are available for the right person.

As a senior member of the Software Engineering team, you'll enable and accelerate the future of food through software and data. You’ll write software and help shape the technical direction of Vow’s software platform empowering the team to build sophisticated biological models, machine learning, robotic automation and lab and factory systemisation.

You will

• Act as a technical lead to Vow’s key software engineering projects; architecting, defining technical strategy, establishing best practice, and mentoring alongside a team of software engineers
• Work extensively where the rubber hits the road, building out or refactoring features extending across the frontend, backend and cloud infrastructure
• Work in a modern stack built on TypeScript, Python, React, and AWS
• Meaningfully contribute and nurture 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, collaborate with scientists, technicians, engineers and data scientists to understand their lab, factory and data challenges. Learn the core science of cultured meat, and delve into our tech stack to immediately ship impactful changes into our software platform. This could involve integrating new scientific instruments on the factory floor into our data pipeline, or building slick frontend tools supporting lab members to better plan their experiments.

Over the next few months, you'll help establish architectural direction and strategy for the team. Drive software solutions against some of our most difficult questions and get your hands dirty helping the team push out great solutions at a rapid pace.

Your qualification

• You will have 5+ years of software engineering experience shipping code in production tech stacks, including in mission-critical and large-scale systems
• You have experience acting as a technical lead operating against complex software problems
• You’re kind, curious, take pride in your work, and enjoy learning new things
• You’re able to identify and make pragmatic tradeoffs – threading the needle between robust engineering and business needs
• You effectively communicate in clear language suitable for your audience, in both written and verbal communication
• You are willing to enthusiastically tackle any part of the stack as needed for the successful shipping of an engineering project. This will certainly include the bread and butter frontend, backend, cloud infrastructure. But could extend to robotics, data science or even some time in the lab!

Will be a plus

• Advanced knowledge of any of the following: TypeScript, Python, React or AWS
• Previous data science or bioinformatics experience

What we offer

• Everyone is an owner. In addition to competitive base salaries, each and every ‘Vowzer’ owns equity in the company so we can all benefit from our hard work and future success.
• Generous paid parental leave. We offer 8 weeks of paid caregiver leave and an additional 8 weeks paid leave for the birth giver.
• Generous relocation budget & support. Support for interstate or overseas team members and their families (including pets!)
• Flexible working hours and location. We value work-life balance. While we’re mostly back in the office, you’re free to choose the best way for you to work.
• Unlimited personal leave. At Vow we recognise that sometimes you need time off to recuperate, look after your mental health, or simply deal with an emergency. We put unlimited personal leave in place to empower you to truly bring your best self to work every single day and you are always paid for days taken off as personal leave.
• Heaps of tasty samples from our culinary centre. Our fantastic "food inventors" on the Vow team are always cooking up new product prototypes, and all Vowzers are given the opportunity to taste, give feedback, and learn from their culinary prowess.
• An awesome converted warehouse “campus” in Alexandria. Complete with a glass-walled lab, manufacturing line, free snacks, a culinary centre, and professional-grade coffee machine in our cafe, as well as a DIY workshop for all hands-on projects.
• Human and dog friendly office! An inclusive community and culture, in a welcoming office, complete with friendly “Vowzer” dogs!
• A variety of social clubs. We encourage all our Vowzers to build the culture with us and share what you love by creating social clubs across the business. From book clubs to hiking groups, we’re always looking for ways to learn and engage with our team.

Additional details

Vow, more than just a job.

Who we are and why join:

• We are building a diverse, mission-led dream team of “Vowzers.” Our mission is to make food products for 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 - so we’re building a culture to match. Be yourself and come as you are
• Work on cutting-edge technology. We’re bringing together cutting-edge innovations in science, engineering, and food, to recreate the world’s most tantalising and unique culinary experiences. All without compromising on ethics or our planet along the way. Since our inception in 2019, we have held the title of being the first startup to cultivate meat from the cells of an undomesticated animal, and have served up our exotic meats ranging from kangaroo dumplings to alpaca sliders in tastings with world-renowned chefs
• Work with and learn from the best. Our team includes some of the world’s top scientists, innovators, operators, and creatives with decades of industry experience. Despite our experiences though, we all strive to build, break, learn, and repeat. We see the impossible as temporary and strive to learn and support our company and fellow Vowzers' growth as much as possible
• We’re fully funded and ready to go. We are a growing Aussie biotech start-up backed by Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Grok Ventures, Tenacious Ventures, P7 Ventures, Toyota Ventures, and PeakBridge VC

You don’t have to have every listed requirement and skill to be a great fit - you may even teach us something about what we should be looking for! If you are passionate about this opportunity and think you have the skills to succeed, please apply! If not, but you know someone who might be interested, please share this post.