Design Co-op, Software Development
Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of in-house automated experimental and computational platforms for designing, building and testing new organisms.
The Design team supports Ginkgo’s organism engineering programs by helping to design, test and analyze new strains, molecules and constructs. As a part of Ginkgo’s foundry we provide computational biology expertise to diverse projects, and work to expand Ginkgo’s genetic engineering platform with the development of novel computational tools, using statistical and machine-learning based approaches to develop world-changing methods for engineering biology.
Do you want to develop software that helps program biology? Join Ginkgo Bioworks and become a part of the next great technological revolution - this is your chance to not only develop algorithms and frameworks at the cutting edge of software technologies, but also work side-by-side with the brightest scientists, organism engineers, and more. You'll have the opportunity to contribute to the exciting frontiers of synthetic biology, including DNA design, genome sequencing, and automating experiments at scales previously unheard of.
As a Design Team Co-op focusing on Software Development, you’ll support Ginkgo’s organism engineering programs by 1) designing software for the construction, validation, experimental testing, and data analysis of genetic constructs and libraries, and 2) helping to expand Ginkgo’s genetic engineering platform with the development of novel computational tools.
Our languages of choice are Python and Javascript, and our tech stack includes AWS, Docker, Django, REST, GraphQL, React, MySQL, Postgres, Elastic Search, Airflow. We expect that you are comfortable programming in Python, and have some exposure to software development, but we don't expect you to be an expert in every platform.
Possible Projects include:
- Implement multiple machine-learning-based scoring systems to predict the outcomes of biological experiments, and identify the superior method using existing in-house data.
- Re-architect scripts and notebooks written by computational biologists, turning them into stable and maintainable software.
- Fully automate the design of libraries of tens of thousands of genetic variants.
The Ginkgo Bioworks Early Talent program is open to students who will return to their degree programs upon completion of their employment at Ginkgo. Candidates must be enrolled in a United States based institution and/or have work authorization in the United States to be eligible to participate.
Responsibilities
- Development of software solutions to solve major synthetic biology challenges
- Conduct data analysis using standard data science tools to interpret the results of molecular biology experiments (e.g. sequencing experiments, proteomics, metabolomics)
- Communicate scientific and technical information within and across Ginkgo’s teams
- Document your work, including creating reports and notebooks that visualize and interpret data
Minimum Requirements
- Currently enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program (current sophomore or junior at time of application)
- Majoring in data science, programming, or computational biology
- Willingness to learn and use a variety of software tools, including code and Ginkgo software under active development
- Experience programming in Python
Preferred Capabilities and Experience
- Ideally you have taken one or more biology courses in genetics or molecular biology
We also feel that it’s important to point out the obvious here – there’s a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.
We’re developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best chance that it’s something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. Therefore, it’s critical that we incorporate the diverse voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of biology.
It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants.