Lead Platform Engineer - Search Platform

90 billion by 2025. As a leader in scientific data and AI, TetraScience stands out for its cutting-edge approach to turning fragmented data into actionable insights. With a strong foundation in Excel and a passion for novel data types, candidates can leverage this role to shape the future of scientific discovery. Before applying, it's crucial to understand TetraScience's unique culture and mission, as outlined in 'The Tetra Way,' and be prepared to drive innovation in a rapidly evolving field.

About the Role

The Lead Platform Engineer - Search Platform at TetraScience is a pivotal role that requires a unique blend of technical expertise, leadership skills, and passion for scientific discovery. As the technical leader of the Search Platform team, you will be responsible for architecting a full-stack search platform that helps scientists find answers across billions of data points, from chemical structures and assay results to unstructured lab documents and instrument data. This role is at the intersection of AI, search, and scientific discovery, offering a challenging and rewarding environment for those who are excited about applying deep search expertise to novel and complex data types.

Day-to-day, you will collaborate closely with Applied AI Scientists, platform engineers, and product teams to deliver high-performance search services that drive discovery, analysis, and decision-making across the bio-pharma R&D lifecycle. Your expertise in search and AI will be crucial in developing custom ranking logic, relevance tuning, and scoring models that surface the right result from massive, heterogeneous scientific datasets.

The domain is bio-pharma R&D, and the data types are fascinating, including molecular structures, experimental datasets, and knowledge graphs linking compounds to targets and assays. While experience in cheminformatics is not required, a willingness to learn and apply your skills in a new and complex domain is essential.

What You Will Do

• Architect a full-stack Search Platform across all layers of indexing and scoring, query understanding, rewriting, and federation, and extensible search experiences.
• Continuously improve search quality through evaluation metrics such as precision@K, recall@K, MRR, and relevance testing with real scientific use cases.
• Engineer sophisticated hybrid search pipelines that blend sparse (keyword), structured (metadata), and dense (vector) retrieval.
• Design custom ranking logic, reciprocal rank fusion, and relevance tuning that surfaces the exact 'needle in the haystack' for drug discovery.
• Lead by example and write code, review designs, and set the standard for engineering quality on the Search Platform team.
• Mentor engineers and help grow the team's search and distributed systems expertise.
• Contribute to architectural decisions, technical strategy, and platform-wide improvements to accelerate scientific insight generation.
• Own and operate the Search Platform infrastructure, ensuring high availability, scalability, performance, and observability across indexing, embedding generation, and query execution.
• Develop and maintain backend services and APIs in Python and TypeScript that power search functionalities.

What We Are Looking For

• Strong foundation in computer science, with a focus on search, AI, and software engineering.
• Experience with Excel and the ability to apply it in a search platform context.
• Deep understanding of classical search techniques and the ability to apply them to novel data types.
• Experience with custom analyzers, index design, and newer methods for semantic and hybrid retrieval.
• Strong coding skills, preferably in Python and TypeScript, with the ability to write clean, maintainable code.
• Experience in leading technical teams, mentoring engineers, and contributing to the growth of search and distributed systems expertise.
• Passion for scientific discovery and the ability to apply technical skills in a bio-pharma R&D context.

Nice to Have

• Experience in cheminformatics or a related field, although not required.
• Knowledge of cloud-based technologies and their application in scalable search systems.
• Familiarity with agile development methodologies and version control systems like Git.

Benefits and Perks

• Opportunity to work on a cutting-edge search platform that impacts scientific discovery.
• Collaborative environment with a team of talented engineers, scientists, and product experts.
• Professional development opportunities, including training and conference sponsorships.
• Competitive compensation package, including equity and benefits.
• Flexible, remote work environment with a stipend for home office setup and productivity tools.

• Ensure your resume and cover letter highlight specific examples of search platform development and leadership experience.
• Be prepared to discuss your approach to solving complex search problems and how you stay updated with the latest technologies in the field.
• Showcase your understanding of the bio-pharma R&D domain and how your skills can be applied to drive scientific discovery.
• Familiarize yourself with TetraScience's 'The Tetra Way' to understand the company culture and expectations.

-Prepare to provide examples of your coding skills, preferably in Python and TypeScript, and your experience with cloud-based technologies.

• Consider reaching out to current or former employees to gain insights into the company culture and the role's responsibilities.