Senior Software Engineer (Python/MLOps)

Job Description

At Bitfount our goal is to make the world’s intractable data interactable. Society’s data superpowers are gathering dust due to a problem that is easy to describe but hard to solve: The data required to solve the world's most pressing problems isn't the kind that's easily shared.

The limitations of current data infrastructure have created painful, slow, expensive and often ineffective workarounds for what should be seamless collaborations between trusted partners. But it doesn't have to be this way. ‍So we're building a missing piece of global infrastructure: a secure network to enable organisations to send algorithms to data. This means they can share the benefits of their data with each other, without having to go through the painful and risky process of moving it around, without compromising its privacy, and without even needing to expose any raw data.

Right now, we’re heads-down on applying our platform to the problem of clinical trial recruitment in the Healthcare space. We’re enabling privacy-preserving collaboration between healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies, which will remove a major friction point in the process, and help ensure critical medicines make it through trials and into the hands of those who need them much sooner.

We believe that great software is built by great people working in great teams, and we’re working hard to make Bitfount a home for both. We’re committed to building an organisation that people are proud to be part of, where everyone can learn and grow, where everyone is supported, and where everyone can do the best, most meaningful work of their careers in a cross-disciplinary environment. Everyone’s viewpoint is valued and we work hard to foster a culture of open discussion. We’re backed by top UK and international investors and a stellar advisory team.

Learn more about how we work at bitfount.com/company/careers

🎭 The role

Bitfount is looking for a motivated, experienced, senior-level Python Software Engineer, who has experience in MLOps and ideally also in desktop app development to join our Engineering team.

You will be working with the team developing our cutting-edge desktop application and its associated python backend. The app allows users to deploy, use, and build ML models collaboratively, as well as perform data analytics - all in a privacy-preserving, easy-to-use manner. The app runs on the user’s own hardware rather than in the cloud, and therefore faces unique challenges in remaining both flexible and robust despite being deployed across disparate hardware and software environments.

📋 More about you

You are an experienced engineer, with a track record of successfully leveraging the foundations of modern software engineering and DevOps practices, with a passion for performance and reliability. You take ownership of your work and see things through. You emphasise code quality and testing and are comfortable with high quality software practices (including code reviews, testing practices, and software design).

You are excited by the opportunity to lead initiatives around improving our ML framework's reliability and performance across various hardware and OS configurations. You may have primarily worked in a cloud setting but are keen to apply your experience to enable training and running models on consumer hardware.

You like to work in a diverse team, relish participating in team-led discussions, and are an effective team player. You will have a key role on improving engineering standards and shaping best practices within the team.

You are energised by our mission to safely unlock the value of data for the benefit of humankind - as we expect you to play an important part in our mission to deliver this goal!

🏖️ What we offer

• Compensation package

  • Salary based on experience and market rate

  • Share options

• Flexible work and tools

  • Hybrid Working policy - 1 day in our lovely Shoreditch office - Fora Montacute Yards

  • A personal budget for any equipment you need to do your job

• Holidays and family time

  • 25 days holiday a year, plus bank holidays - please use them all!

  • Enhanced paid maternity, paternity and adoption leave

• Learning and development

  • Personal learning budget to use on books, courses, conferences and more

• Health & Wellbeing

  • Private Medical Insurance including optical, dental and mental health.

  • Cycle to work scheme

• Community

  • Great colleagues: we value a culture of authenticity, humility, and excellence. We want you to make an impact on our culture.

  • Regular (optional) team and company events in and out of the office

  • Lunch on Bitfount once a week if you’re office-based

Bitfount is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, veteran, neurodiversity status or disability status.

Please note: all successful applicants will be subject to a DBS reference check in line with industry norms.

🌈 You may be a fit for this role if you:

• Have 5+ years of relevant experience designing and building software applications at a tech-forward, software company with a strong emphasis on system design principles and methodologies.

• Either have MLOps experience, or experience with the practical challenges involved with training and deploying machine learning models.

• Have an excellent working knowledge of Python and Python unit testing.

• Have proven experience in using:

  • automated testing frameworks and contributing to continuous integration pipelines, and

  • container technologies or developing desktop applications.

• Have a strong understanding of:

  • modern DevOps practices, and

  • version control systems (e.g., Git), continuous integration, and continuous deployment pipelines.

• Have strong communication skills to bridge the gap between design, product, and engineering.

• Are enthusiastic about working on an ML-driven product team.

• Can pick things up quickly and adapt - we are a start-up after all!

• Are highly curious; you’re not satisfied with getting something to work, you want to understand why it works and improve the quality of the product/software.

• Are highly driven to see things through to the end: the job isn’t done until it's tested, in the product, and delivered to our customers.

Bonus points for:

• Experience with developing and deploying applications for Windows desktops or embedded systems.

• Experience with Rust or Terraform.

• Experience with privacy, security, or qualifications in machine learning.

• Extensive experience using PyTorch, TensorFlow for machine learning, or NumPy for general data science tasks.

The interview process:

• Getting to know you: 30 min chat with our People and Operations manager to talk about your experience and to answer questions about the role

• Take Home Task to assess your MLOps Python abilities

• Technical interview: 60 minute interview with 2 Python/ML engineers

• Leadership interview: 60 minute chat with our Head of Engineering about your prior accomplishments and the challenges you’ve faced as an engineer

• Bit-of-Bitfount (Optional): A paid full day of work, working with the team on an assignment comparable to the regular duties of this role and getting to meet the team

• Offer 🎉