Job Description Principal Engineer, Software Engineering Our Destination “Computing the future of medicine” We are integrating the latest advances in data science and artificial intelligence to develop life-transforming RNA interference (RNAi) medicines. We combine cutting-edge computation and AI with RNAi to make better medicines faster. Our unique approach enables us to differentiate, de-risk, and rapidly deploy our enabling platforms (HepNet™ and GalOmic™) to create novel GalNAc-siRNA therapies, improving upon traditional approaches to drug discovery. Our rapid and reproducible process has produced a broad therapeutic pipeline of GalOmic™ RNAi therapies targeting novel genes that have demonstrated disease-modifying potential in preclinical disease models. We are advancing our pipeline towards the clinic, with our most advanced asset (ETX-312, for the treatment of MASH) currently undergoing IND-enabling studies, the final stage of preclinical development. It is an incredibly exciting time for ETX, as we get closer to delivering on our mission of delivering life-transforming medicines to patients and ultimately realising the full potential of our AI-enhanced approach to drug discovery. Our Journey Great progress demands great people. We aim to make the impossible, possible with a healthy dose of fun along the way. We prize creative thinkers who like to join the dots and love to recognise those that do. Everyone has potential; here, you will be able to realise it fully. In joining us, you're not just joining a company, you're taking up an opportunity to pioneer change and to shift the paradigm in biotech. Our dynamic environment and team will empower you to take the initiative, explore new ideas, and drive groundbreaking results. Your Adventure You’ll be a joining a small agile team with a wide range of skills, working very closely with others across the company to build and maintain our computational drug discovery platform. This is a unique opportunity to play a significant role in building software products that have never been built before, anywhere. The engineering team has a very varied portfolio; python applications and data transformation/integration pipelines, cloud native large language model applications, Java services in Kubernetes, a structured and unstructured data platform, and GUI applications. We work through the entire product life cycle; user requirements gathering, prototyping, solution design, architecture, build, test, deploy, and support. This role, therefore, requires you to be comfortable in the full back-end stack. You will be involved in all aspects of software engineering from day one, and pushed to learn and progress as far as you are able. Being on the cutting edge means that work will be interesting, exciting, and challenging – and you will be making a worthwhile impact on the treatment of important diseases. We believe that the best software is produced when the people building it are tightly integrated with their users, so you will also get the opportunity to learn some molecular biology and medicine along the way Reporting into the Senior Director, Head of Engineering. The position is based in our office in Paddington, London, UK. The working hours for this role are 35 hours per week, Monday to Friday. C urrent hybrid working arrangements permit Friday working from home. What you will do: Build machine learning powered software - Collaborate with AI and ML experts to integrate predictive tools for drug discovery Develop and maintain bioinformatics tools - Build and enhance software for analysing and processing large-scale biological datasets Optimise Data Pipelines - Design, implement, and improve bioinformatics pipelines to rapidly and efficiently process biological data, optimising for accuracy and performance Generally, you will: Work closely with all platform users across the company to gather requirements for and design products and features that fit the business priorities and timescales Design, test, deploy, maintain, and improve the platform using Python and AWS CDK and CloudFormation, working to an agile methodology and common engineering best practices Support our platform in line with user expectations and agreed service level Deal with data of all types – ingest, automation, provision, and quality Collaborate, share knowledge, train, and mentor other colleagues in the team and outside it Proactively look out for and implement improvements to our processes and technology Learn, and be curious about, all aspects of the drug discovery process and how we aim to improve it Skills & qualifications Essential: Generalist with a background in the back-end stack, end-to-end cloud application design and development Python for applications expert, but keen polyglot – very proficient in at least one other mainstream language Modern software development practices – DevOps, CI/CD, containerisation, serverless, testing Strong experience with infrastructure as code on AWS using a wide range of AWS services; EC2, ECS, Lambda, S3, SQS, RDS, DocumentDb, DynamoDb, CloudWatch, Glue, VPC and IAM Comfortable with SQL and noSQL databases – both populating and querying using native queries and pandas/datatable Agile – Scrum or Kanban delivery, iterating on software with pragmatic value increments and customer engagement, general passion for the agile approach Experience working with non-technical users – gathering and refining complex requirements Pragmatic - interested in solving real-world problems, not technology for its own sake Excellent time management and organisation Good and precise communication – verbal and written, with broad and varied audiences Team focused – you enjoy working to shared goals and helping others A believer in processes with a keen eye for spotting inefficiencies Interest in learning new skills and contribute outside your direct role Desire to learn, and be curious about, all aspects of the drug discovery process and how we aim to improve it Nice to have: Background in Biology/Pharma Experience of workflow technology e.g. Airflow, Dagster, NiFi, NextFlow etc Front end development e.g. React/Angular, Next.js Experience of common data lake technology e.g. Databricks, Snowflake, Glue Experience of machine learning, MLOps, or LLM technologies Our culture & values Our success starts & ends with our team – the passionate, curious and collaborative individuals who work here. All are committed to pushing technology to the limit to make a difference to patients, to R&D and to each other – we call this our PACT. We’re not looking for people who are exactly like us. We’re looking for people who care about and value the same guiding principles while bringing different ideas, perspectives & opinions. Our benefits We invest in your success Competitive salary Discretionary performance related bonus PACT awards (monthly recognition scheme) We care about you Private medical cover with Bupa Medicash Health Cash Plan Employee Assistance Programme Reward Gateway (deals & discounts and wellbeing centre) Annual season ticket loan We help you protect your future 10% employer pension contribution (you can also make your own contributions via salary sacrifice) Life insurance (4 x annual salary) We unlock your potential Personal development time Departmental learning and development budget (including attending external training, conferences, etc.) We make it fun Social and well-being events throughout the year such as a newly created ETX Summer dodgeball team, bouldering, pizza making sessions and we even have a basketball court on our roof terrace 25 days of annual leave public holidays EDI Statement Our ambition is to have a positive impact on society at a global level by discovering and developing novel therapeutic targets in areas of high unmet need. We believe that providing equal opportunities, valuing diversity, and promoting a culture of openness and inclusivity are vital in the journey to realise our ambition. We therefore aim to create an environment where people are free to be themselves regardless of their identity or background.