Lead Software Architect

About this role

Responsibilities

• You are Employee #1 for software. You will start with a blank repository and full ownership of the entire vertical software stack - from firmware talking directly to hardware, all the way up to the tools our scientists use to visualize experimental results. This is not a web or SaaS role. You will write code that moves physical liquids in a lab.
• What You'll Build
• Firmware & control: Write the code that drives our digital microfluidic chip - precise timing, electrode actuation, sensor readout - using Python, C, C++, or Rust on bare metal or an RTOS.
• Platform & host: Build the Embedded Linux host environment that orchestrates the device, manages drivers, and exposes APIs to the outside world.
• Data pipeline: Design the architecture that reliably moves complex biological data off the device and into persistent storage without loss.
• Scientist tooling: Build internal dashboards and GUIs (Qt, React, or Python-based) that let our R&D team visualize fluid movements and data signals in real time - closing the feedback loop between software and science.
• Who You Are
• You are a founder-caliber Systems Architect with deep embedded and firmware expertise and the breadth to own architecture end-to-end. You are comfortable reading schematics, using logic analyzers, and debugging at the hardware-software interface. You have designed systems from scratch and know how to properly decouple a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) from application logic. Experience with Embedded Linux and device drivers is expected. Bonus points for data engineering skills (Python, SQL, cloud storage) a