Full-Stack Engineer, Backend Focus

Synonym is a technology company focused on accelerating production and market adoption of materials and ingredients made with biology. Founded in early 2022, Synonym has established itself as the leading player in the sector, providing bioproduct-related data services and facilitating production via its network of capacity partners.

With Synonym, you'll play a critical role in shaping the future of biomanufacturing, influencing how major corporations approach innovation and commercialization in a rapidly evolving sector.  If you're ready to tackle impactful challenges in a fast-moving startup environment, we'd love to connect.

About Us

We’re a small and nimble group within Synonym building an AI-native process simulation and scenario planning platform for industrial processes. Our product, Scaler, was born out of a desire to solve a problem our chemical engineering team faces on every project we engage on: thousands of hours spent on repetitive, spreadsheet-driven engineering workflows that require extensive QA and QC processes. We’ve built an MVP and public pilot over the last 18 months and are now taking aim at a bigger opportunity: reimagining how industrial facilities are conceived, planned, and executed to decrease process engineering timelines by 10x, enabling companies and investors to bring new products to market and accelerating industrial decarbonization.

We’re not building another CRUD app or OpenAI wrapper – the foundation of Scaler’s backend is a no-code process simulation engine that applies chemical engineering principles and AI-enabled workflows to inform infrastructure investment decisions for industrial projects with construction budgets from $10s to $100s of millions. If this sounds exciting to you, please reach out!

Role Description (Full-Stack Engineer, Backend)

As a full-stack software engineer, you’ll work across our codebase to develop Scaler from the ground up. We’re looking for candidates who enjoy taking ideas from 0 to 1, owning key pieces of the product, and working closely with users in a flat organization. As an early hire on our software team, you’ll have the opportunity to contribute across the software stack, shape our product roadmap, and grow with the team.

While this is a full-stack engineering role, it has a backend focus. Ideal candidates should have experience designing and implementing database systems, APIs, and compute-intensive backend systems.

Example projects you might work on:

• Designing an Git-like version control system for chemical engineers

• Performance optimization of our process simulation engine

• Integrating LLMs to speed up repetitive user workflows

• Adding support for new simulation capabilities

• Speeding up our custom, no-code compiler

• Building out a data pipeline for ingesting public utility datasets

Feel free to ask us what any of those things mean!

Competencies

Must-have

• Strong proficiency in Python, working knowledge of Typescript/React

• Experience architecting backend systems

• Demonstrated experience shipping products in an early-stage startup environment

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

• High level of ownership and a bias toward action

• Authorization to work in the United States

Nice-to-have

• Familiarity with other science and engineering disciplines (e.g., biology, physics, chemistry)

• Experience in the specific frameworks we use: React, Next.js, Redux, TailwindCSS (frontend); FastAPI, Postgres, Supabase (backend)

• Degree in Computer Science or a related field preferred

Other

While fully-remote, Synonym’s team highly values in-person collaboration. We have a preference for candidates near our existing team (NYC, SF/Bay Area, Boston) who are open to hybrid work.

Compensation

Salary range: $140-200k, based on experience

Our team aspires to hire great people and create an environment where we can be happy, feel challenged, and do our best work. It's an exciting time to join Synonym and build that environment from the ground up!

Benefits Include

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage

• Daily lunch allowance

• Beautiful office in SoHo (NYC), or coworking space (Boston, SF Bay Area)

• Competitive compensation packages, including equity

• Flexible PTO

• 401(k) 

• Team offsites

Synonym provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.