Senior Security, DevOps, and Backend Engineer
The Company
We are Alloy Therapeutics—a biotechnology ecosystem company empowering the global scientific community to make better medicines together. Through a community of partners, we democratize access to pre-competitive tools, technologies, services, and company creation capabilities that are foundational for discovering and developing therapeutic biologics. The company facilitates affordable, non-exclusive access to the entire drug discovery community from academic scientists, small and medium biotech, to the largest biopharma. At Alloy, we believe our industry should compete on getting the best drugs to patients as quickly as possible, not exclusive access to the best platforms. As a reflection of our relentless commitment to the scientific community, we reinvest 100% of its revenue in innovation and access to innovation. MAY THE BEST DRUG WIN.
Alloy is headquartered in Waltham, MA with additional labs in Basel, CH; Cambridge, UK; and Athens, GA. Successful members thrive in our shared culture of accountability, deliberate trust, and open communication. As a team we aspire to work together to exceed expectations and collectively contribute across the global organization to always maintain our nimble, startup culture. Come thrive at Alloy!
The Team
The Senior Full Stack Software Engineer will join the Insights team. This team builds internal and external software products that power Alloy’s operations, partner portals, and data platforms. Working at the intersection of engineering, products, and science, the team connects disciplines across Alloy to deliver modern, scalable, and intuitive web applications that accelerate drug discovery through technology.The Role
As a Senior Security, DevOps, and Backend Engineer, you will be responsible for architecting and maintaining the secure, cloud-based systems that power Alloy’s global software ecosystem. You will design, implement, and manage scalable backend services, CI/CD pipelines, and security protocols that ensure Alloy’s systems are robust, compliant, and performant.
This role requires a security-minded problem solver with deep experience in backend development, infrastructure automation, and modern DevOps practices. You’ll work closely with full stack engineers, data scientists, and IT operations to deliver secure and efficient software systems that scale with Alloy’s growing platform.
This role will report to Etienne Schmelzer, and will have autonomy in owning critical infrastructure, security, and backend projects across the global organization.How You’ll Drive Impact
- Secure: Design and enforce security best practices across infrastructure, applications, and data systems.
- Automate: Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and monitoring systems to streamline development and deployment.
- Scale: Architect and optimize backend systems and APIs for performance, reliability, and scalability.
- Monitor: Implement robust observability, logging, and alerting systems to ensure uptime and compliance.
- Collaborate: Partner with engineering, IT, and leadership teams to align infrastructure strategy with organizational goals.
Principal Responsibilities
- Design and implement secure, scalable backend services and APIs using Python
- Manage and optimize Alloy’s cloud infrastructure (AWS), ensuring resilience, scalability, and cost efficiency.
- Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines using tools such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or CircleCI.
- Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using (Terraform or CloudFormation).
- Conduct regular security audits, penetration testing, and vulnerability assessments.
- Configure and manage IAM roles, networking policies, and encryption standards.
- Monitor and manage system performance, uptime, and resource utilization using modern observability tools (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, CloudWatch).
- Develop internal automation scripts and tools to improve developer productivity and system reliability.
- Collaborate with development teams to ensure security is embedded throughout the SDLC.
- Contribute to long-term architectural strategy and mentor junior engineers on best practices.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Cybersecurity, or a related field.
- 5+ years of experience in backend or DevOps engineering roles.
- Strong proficiency in Python and frameworks such as Django or Flask.
- Proven experience with AWS (EC2, S3, IAM, Lambda, CloudFormation, RDS).
- Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) with Terraform or equivalent.
- Deep understanding of network security, authentication, and encryption.
- Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and container orchestration.
- Experience with logging, monitoring, and alerting systems (CloudWatch, Datadog, ELK Stack, Prometheus).
- Strong knowledge of Linux systems administration and shell scripting.
- Experience with vulnerability scanning, secrets management, and compliance frameworks (ISO 27001, SOC2, etc.).
- Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to work independently and collaboratively.
- Comfortable working across time zones with distributed teams.
- Willingness to travel occasionally (up to 10%).