Principal Full-Stack Engineer (Django)

About the role

Who We Are

Technology has transformed every aspect of our lives. Yet, it still takes 12 years to develop a single drug because 90% of drugs fail in clinical trials, leaving hundreds of millions of patients without effective treatments. Accelerating the pace of bringing new, effective medicines to patients is one of the greatest opportunities for humanity.

Our mission is to develop better drugs, faster using artificial intelligence (AI) and human data. We have created a proprietary, all-in-human AI drug discovery engine, CONVERGE, which houses one of the field's largest and most comprehensive databases of multi-modal patient data sourced directly from human tissue. We use machine learning to map the complex causes of disease, discover new targets with a greater probability of success, and de-risk drug development.

We have delivered 2 new drugs from CONVERGE to clinical trials, discovered 282 new targets, and signed 2 commercial partnerships with Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca totaling $1.6B. We are a team of engineers, neuroscientists, and drug developers united around an audacious vision: to build the Genentech of the digital age.

Your Mission

Reporting to the Head of Product & Engineering, and working alongside Verge's platform and computational biology teams, the principal full-stack engineer will be responsible for writing and shipping the code that matures Verge's drug discovery engine to enable faster, easier access to data and rapid innovation for internal stakeholders, while laying the rails for Verge's third-party customers and partners to harness them directly in the future.

Verge's platform team is a small, highly autonomous group of scientists, engineers, and subject matter experts. The successful candidate will play a key part in scoping and directing the priorities and technical solutions they implement.

Your 12 Month Outcomes

• Mature internal target discovery service into self-serve tool for internal stakeholders
• MVP of self-serve SaaS platform built on top of internal service to allow external customers to leverage Verge's proprietary dataset and tools.

You Will Own

• Design and build user-facing web applications that transform data platform outputs into intuitive, self-service products for internal and external customers,
• Develop Django-based interfaces including views, templates, forms, and APIs that enable users to interact with underlying data and analysis,
• Create interactive dashboards, data visualization tools, and exploration interfaces that make complex data accessible to non-technical users,
• Collaborate with the Data Engineer to understand data structures, APIs, and pipeline outputs, translating them into compelling user experiences,
• Build authentication, authorisation, and user management systems to support multi-tenant SaaS operationsImplement customer onboarding flows, account management interfaces, and self-service configuration toolsIntegrate charting and visualization libraries (D3.js, Chart.js, Plotly) to produce scientifically accurate and user-friendly data displays,
• Build RESTful APIs and backend services that connect Django applications to the underlying data platform,
• Participate in user testing and gather feedback to iteratively improve product usability and feature set,
• Establish automated testing frameworks and CI/CD pipelines for reliable deployments,
• Monitor application performance, user behaviour analytics, and error tracking to identify improvement opportunities,
• Work cross-functionally with science, engineering, and commercial teams to prioritise features and gather requirements.

Requirements

Candidates must have :

• Either:
• 7+ years of professional experience building web applications as a full-stack engineer, with extensive experience of Django,
• Extensive experience with frontend frameworks or libraries (React, Vue, or similar),
• Significant experience using data visualization libraries (D3.js, Chart.js, Plotly, etc.) to create impactful charts and dashboards for a variety of user stories,
• Deep understanding of the pros and cons of different databases for different use cases, and strong opinions on abstractions such as GraphQL and SQLAlchemy,
• Mastery of version control (Git), testing frameworks such as Pytest and Jest, and CI/CD pipelines,
• Professional fluency with web security best practices (CSRF, XSS, authentication, authorization) and state management,
• Demonstrable experience conceiving and implementing thoughtful user interfaces (whether hand-rolled or utilizing modern component libraries and frameworks) that help users rapidly experience the value of a service,
• Comfortable translating technical capabilities and internal functionality into user-facing features and benefits,
• Deep playbook for collaborating with both technical (e.g. data engineers, scientists) and non-technical (e.g. business development) stakeholders
• Ability to thrive in uncertainty with frequently changing priorities
• Deep alignment with our values
• A passion for making an impact on patients

Exceptional candidates may also have:

• Previous experience building SaaS products or multi-tenant web applications,
• Knowledge of modern CSS frameworks and component libraries,
• Extensive experience with web sockets or other real-time data streaming technologies in a web application context,
• Familiarity with the challenges of, and approaches to, working with data-intensive applications or scientific software,
• Experience working with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and containerization (Docker),
• Working knowledge of user analytics tools (Mixpanel, Amplitude, Google Analytics),
• Previous experience collaborating with scientific or technical end-users.

Finally, we seek candidates who embrace our values and way of working:

• Ability to thrive in uncertainty with frequently changing priorities
• Deep alignment withour values
• A passion for making an impact on patients