Mithrl — Senior/Staff Full Stack Engineer

• →10+ years professional full-stack or backend engineering, not including internships [Required] (conflict: 4+ YOE stated in the job description, intake, and the "Senior/Staff" title. See flags.)

• Built products at early-stage or high-growth startups, preferably as a founder or early employee [Must have]
• Shipping and owning production systems used by real customers [Must have]
• Designing and working with scalable systems, databases, and data-intensive applications [Required]

• BS in Computer Science, STEM, or a related technical field [Required]

• Strong proficiency in modern frameworks like Python and React [Must have]
• Building backend services and REST APIs; Django a plus [Required]
• Familiarity with GraphQL and cloud infrastructure like AWS [Strongly preferred]

• Intellectually curious and excited to learn; asks questions and engages deeply with the product and problem space [Required]
• Positive and collaborative; thrives in a high-communication, in-person team culture [Required]

• Based in or willing to relocate to SF and work 4–5 days in-office [Must have]
• Demonstrated interest in life sciences, drug discovery, or computational biology [Strongly preferred]

• Repeated job hopping: multiple stints under 8 months
• Only life-science / big-pharma experience (e.g. Genentech, Roche); not the software background sought
• Big-tech-only backgrounds with no product-forward or startup exposure

• Salary: $175K–$270K (intake mentioned up to $280K)
• Equity: 0.2–0.6% (why-join copy and intake said 0.3–0.6%)
• On-site policy: 5 days in-person, SF office near Montgomery BART (requirement states 4–5 days)
• Visa sponsorship: Open to visa transfers (OPT, H-1B transfers); intake also mentioned new H-1Bs
• Employment type: Full-time
• Location: San Francisco, CA

1. Are you based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco for an in-person (4–5 days/week) role?
2. What is your salary expectation?
3. How actively are you exploring new opportunities?

Updated Apr 25, 2026

High-growth Bay Area product-focused startups (Series A–C) with strong full-stack cultures Watershed, Lumos Labs (Lumosity), Vercel, Retool, Replit, Linear Technology, Airtable, ZipRecruiter, Notion, Coda

Mid-stage startups past early traction, where engineers built 0-to-1 products Ramp, Brex, Flexport, Vanta, Ashby, Instawork, Optomi, Webflow, Mercury, Hearsay Systems

AI/ML startups with data-intensive, product-facing platforms Cohere, Baseten, Weights & Biases, Snorkel AI, Modal Labs, Anyscale, Hebbia, Glean, Scale AI, Labelbox

Life sciences / biotech software (software-first, not legacy pharma IT) Benchling, insitro, Recursion, Cellarity, Deepcell, Tempus AI, Eikon Therapeutics, Atomic AI, Gandeeva Therapeutics

Developer tools and data platform startups with strong product-engineering DNA PostHog, Hasura, Dagster Labs, Supabase, Observable, Streamlit, Prefect, PlanetScale, dbt Labs, Hexaware Technologies

Non-ideal: large financial services / enterprise with legacy stacks Fidelity Investments, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Charles Schwab, Mastercard, Bloomberg, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Visa

Non-ideal: large life science / big pharma Genentech, Roche, Amgen

Avoid Expo

For reference only. Do not source these specific profiles.

Prashant Khanduri (Rank #1) — LinkedIn Staff Engineer, Distributed Systems & Platform, 01 to Scale | SF Bay Area

• Waterloo grad (co-op structure means ~2 years of built-in real experience)
• At Affirm and Hearsay in their early days; strong early-stage signal
• Went from engineering manager back to IC; prefers building
• Former founder (Sn126, ~5 years); understands startup pace firsthand
• Watch: 17 YOE (higher comp expectations); currently SentiLink (later-stage), confirm genuine early-stage interest

Simon S. (Rank #2) — LinkedIn Software Engineer | SF Bay Area

• Palantir background (quality engineers there are infra/ops-strong, not traditional QA)
• Grew from quality engineer to software engineer at Palantir
• Left Palantir for startups (LeapYear, then Opto); 4+ years at Opto
• Watch: Opto is pivoting to AI (confirm stack still relevant); confirm product engineering vs pure infrastructure

Sree Palaparthi (Rank #3) — LinkedIn Engineering | San Francisco

• Joined Drafted at seed stage and received a return offer
• 4+ years at Instawork post-acquisition; consistency and loyalty
• CS Master's from Northeastern
• The 'solid but not shiny' startup profile prioritized over FAANG
• Watch: no visible promotion trajectory; low likelihood to leave, confirm he is ready to move

• Emphasize startup & founder experience: prioritize candidates with clear 01, greenfield building experience and long tenure (8+ months), filtering out those mostly from big tech or with short stints.
• Ensure technical depth & end-to-end ownership: candidates must have proven production shipping of backend services, APIs, and data pipelines using Python/React/Django, with concrete impact stories.
• Confirm SF-based / on-site alignment: only submit candidates willing and able to work 5 days in SF.
• Reduce volume, focus on quality: slow down new submissions and double-check backgrounds against the early-stage startup mandate before scheduling interviews.