Senior Engineering Manager, Formation Bio
$211-260k
+ Equity
3-5 days a week in office
Powering hyper-efficient, tech-driven drug development
Job no longer available
Powering hyper-efficient, tech-driven drug development
101-200 employees
Job no longer available
$211-260k
+ Equity
3-5 days a week in office
101-200 employees
Company mission
To bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently.
Role
Who you are
- The ideal candidate is passionate about developing quality products, enabling their team to be the best version of themselves, and committed to continuous improvement
- Minimum of 4 years of experience in leading & growing software engineering teams
- Minimum of 6 years of experience in building products in the software industry using modern technologies
- Proven ability to thrive in ambiguous and rapidly-changing environments, with a proven track record of contributing significantly to the successful launch and scaling of new and innovative products, especially in a 0-1 setting
- Proven ability to coach and grow engineers at different levels
- Exceptional collaboration and communication skills to effectively engage and work along stakeholders from diverse disciplines and varying levels of technical expertise
- Ideally, adept at translating complex technical concepts into clear, actionable insights for all audiences
- Experience with AI technologies, particularly in LLMs and machine learning
- Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and the full end-to-end process of modern software deployment (e.g., containerization, CI/CD)
- Experience in the pharmaceutical or biotech industry is a plus, but not required
What the job involves
- As a Senior Engineering Manager on our Product Engineering teams, you will be accountable for Engineering strategy, design, development, and implementation of one or more of our teams that are responsible for building innovative software products leveraging emerging technologies
- Partner with Product to align vision, strategy, and roadmap for your teams
- Drive the execution of the roadmap by working closely with cross-functional teams
- Ensure that products are built to be reliable and easy to maintain
- Identify and mitigate technical risks and make sound decisions to ensure that the product is delivered on time and within budget
- Mentor, grow, and lead engineers, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning
- Partner with senior leadership to evolve organizational structure
- Attract, retain & grow top technical talent
- Develop and implement best practices that drive efficiency, quality, and innovation within your teams
- Optimize Engineering processes to achieve high levels of productivity and quality while reducing cycle time and technical debt for your squad and TrialSpark's data users
- Work with other teams such as Data Platform & Site Reliability Engineering to establish and improve the software development and deployment lifecycle
- Partner with senior engineering leadership to align vision and strategy for the Engineering org
Our take
Clinical drug trials are lengthy and expensive, delaying the supply of vital new drugs to patients and costing lives. For Formation Bio, this is an efficiency issue - one which it hopes to solve with its end-to-end automation solution.
According to the company, its approach has teams running medical trials twice as fast and at half the cost. This success has pushed Formation to expand beyond supporting trials into developing assets itself. In 2025, it reached a major milestone by licensing its first drug in a deal worth up to hundreds of millions. Alongside this, the company has also added an early immunology program to its pipeline, signalling a broader push into in-house development.
Now a Unicorn, with partners including Pfizer, Sanofi, Novartis and 23andMe, Formation Bio is steadily embedding itself within the Big Pharma ecosystem. How far it can go remains an open question, but the prospect of cheaper drugs and faster innovation is becoming harder for the industry to ignore.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
30% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Jun 2024
$372m
SERIES D
Sep 2021
$156m
SERIES C
Total funding: $530.3m
Company benefits
- Flexible Time Off: We have a flexible PTO policy and we encourage our team members to take the time that they need to recharge
- Parental Leave: All parents receive 12 weeks of fully paid bonding leave to welcome a newborn, adopted, or fostered child, and birthing parents are eligible for an additional 6-8 weeks of paid leave
- Comprehensive Benefits: All full time employees have access to health, vision, and dental insurance. Additionally, we provide pre-tax commuter benefits, access to a 401k plan, short and long-term disability and life insurance.
- Education & Career Development Resources: Formation Bio offers a plethora of professional development resources to employees, including a yearly L&D stipend, internal mobility opportunities, in depth trainings, leadership coaching, and more.
- Community: Our teams collaborate closely to achieve our mission, supporting each other across functions and priorities. We build connection through team-building events, quarterly company gatherings, a biennial company-wide retreat, and various Employee Resource Groups.
Company values
- Think in first principles: We rigorously interrogate all possible paths to understand how we can do things differently and faster. We challenge assumptions, ask why, and solve problems from the ground up
- Be a scientist: We are curious and we continuously learn. We steelman, not strawman in debates. We listen, rapidly iterate, and make the best decisions with the evidence we have
- Deliver care: We lead with empathy. We value different perspectives, collaborate across teams, and support one another. We give and receive direct, actionable and timely feedback to hold ourselves and others to a high bar
- Champion the mission: We keep the mission as our north star and deliver impact for patients. We hold ourselves accountable for our wins and failures and keep moving forward
Company HQ
Midtown South, New York, NY
Articles
Leadership
Benjamine Liu
(Co-Founder & CEO)Worked as a computational biologist at various Neurology departments, following a D.Phil in computational Biology and Psychiatry at Oxford. They are also an Advisor at Harvard Business School.
Linhao Zhang
(Co-Founder)Linhao is also the Founder of Foundation 649. Previously, they were a Product Engineer at Oscar Insurance, a Software Engineer at Salesforce, and co-founder of Day 7 Photography.
Dan Neil
(CTO)Prior to joining Formation Bio in 2025, Dan was the Chief Data Officer at Tessera Therapeutics. Before that, they spent nearly 7 years at BenevolentAI in various roles, including SVP of AI & NY Site Lead and CTO.
Dale Klasko
(Senior Vice President, People)Dale built her career as a campus recruiting leader and strategic people business partner at growth-stage companies in the adtech & finservices industries.
Salary benchmarks
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