Senior Engineering Manager

About Formation Bio

Formation Bio is a tech and AI driven pharma company differentiated by radically more efficient drug development.

Advancements in AI and drug discovery are creating more candidate drugs than the industry can progress because of the high cost and time of clinical trials. Recognizing that this development bottleneck may ultimately limit the number of new medicines that can reach patients, Formation Bio, founded in 2016 as TrialSpark Inc., has built technology platforms, processes, and capabilities to accelerate all aspects of drug development and clinical trials. Formation Bio partners, acquires, or in-licenses drugs from pharma companies, research organizations, and biotechs to develop programs past clinical proof of concept and beyond, ultimately helping to bring new medicines to patients. The company is backed by investors across pharma and tech, including a16z, Sequoia, Sanofi, Thrive Capital, Sam Altman, John Doerr, Spark Capital, SV Angel Growth, and others.

You can read more at the following links:

• Our Vision for AI in Pharma
• Our Current Drug Portfolio
• Our Technology & Platform

At Formation Bio, our values are the driving force behind our mission to revolutionize the pharma industry. Every team and individual at the company shares these same values, and every team and individual plays a key part in our mission to bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently.

About the Position

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.

Engineering leaders at Formation Bio operate along three dimensions to support business outcomes:

• Product
  • 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
• People
  • 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
• Process
  • 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

The ideal candidate is passionate about developing quality products, enabling their team to be the best version of themselves, and committed to continuous improvement.

About You

• 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

We offer competitive compensation because we want to hire the best people and reward them for their contributions to our mission. We pay all employees competitively relative to the New York City market, regardless of their location. In compliance with NYC’s pay transparency law and in pursuit of pay equity and fairness, we publish salary ranges for all open roles at Formation Bio. The target salary range for this role is $211,000 - $260,000.

On top of base salary, we also offer equity, generous perks, location flexibility, and comprehensive benefits – learn more about them and our compensation philosophy here.

If this range doesn’t match your expectations, please still apply because we may have something else for you.

#LI-hybrid

You will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.