DNAnexus
life sciences
VP,Engineering
Neural analysis suggests this role is
optimal for mid candidates.
“VP, Engineering at DNAnexus. Skills: VP-level leadership, Engineering Pod leadership, Agentic AI platform development, Petascale Big Data platform development, Team scale-up and management structure design, Cloud Architecture, Distributed Systems, Data Processing and Storage at Scale. Lead Engineering pods. Build the management layer across engineering pods”
Industry & Context.
figure out how everything works; technical incidents
flexibility to join evening calls (~8 p. m. CET) several times per week, occasional evening availability (~8 p. m. CET) required for West Coast US alignment, candidates in the vicinity of Prague are expected to be in the office at least 2 days per week, candidates based further from Prague are expected to be in the office at least one week per month
What They're Looking For.
Must Have
15+ years of software product development experience, 7+ years managing (software and data) engineering teams, 3+ years as a manager of managers (total org size of 40+), Proven track record scaling engineering organizations from ~30 to 80+ people, including designing the management structure, Deep expertise in petascale data processing and storage — you can speak authoritatively about distributed data platforms at scale, Experience with building agentic platforms and understanding the impact on data platform requirements, Able to articulate how AI acts as a force multiplier in engineering productivity and product capability, with demonstrated experience, Experience with greenfield platform development — building foundational systems from scratch, not just iterating on existing ones, Background in a highly regulated industry (financial services, defense, healthcare, life sciences, etc. ) with a appreciation for compliance, security, and data governance, Solid cloud architecture knowledge (AWS Azure/GCP/OCI considered), hands-on comfort with distributed systems, REST APIs, and SQL/NoSQL databases, Comfortable working in a distributed, remote-first environment with asynchronous communication across time zones, Located in or able to work in Central European Time, with flexibility to join evening calls (~8 p. m. CET) several times per week
Nice to Have
Healthcare or life sciences industry experience, Familiarity with JavaScript, Node. js, or Python
What You'll Do.
Lead Engineering pods
Build the management layer across engineering pods
Scale the organization
Establish and scale the leadership infrastructure
and elevate high-potential talent into formal leadership roles
Define a long-term technical vision for platform foundations
Own the roadmap and deliver against it
Sit with engineers during technical incidents
Mediate architectural decisions
Stay close to the code and systems
Drive cross-functional collaboration with Product Management and other engineering teams
Build core platform components
Bridge Czech Republic and the US (East & West Coast)
Maintain alignment with US-based stakeholders
Champion engineering culture
Raise the bar on quality
Foster a high-performance
high-trust environment
Establish best practices around agile delivery
and continuous process improvement
How You'll Work.
Team & Collaboration
Drive cross-functional collaboration with Product Management and other engineering teams; Bridge Czech Republic and the US (East & West Coast); Maintain alignment with US-based stakeholders
Communication Scope
asynchronous communication across time zones; articulate how AI acts as a force multiplier
Process & Methodology
roadmap definition, deliver against roadmap, agile delivery
Full Job Description
Founded in 2009, DNAnexus is the enterprise orchestration platform for precision health. A pioneer in cloud-based omics and purpose-built bioinformatics for life sciences, DNAnexus helps customers contextualize, orchestrate, and federate multiomic and real-world data to derive actionable insights and accelerate the journey from sequence to scientific breakthrough. DNAnexus accomplishes this through its compliance-first, AI-enabled platform, equipped to handle extreme scale and complex data processing for genomics, multiomics, and beyond. For more information, visit [www.dnanexus.com](http://www.dnanexus.com). Role Overview This is a VP-level position reporting directly to the CTO. You will lead Engineering pods — the foundational platform teams powering our Agentic AI and Big Data capabilities. Your immediate mandate is to build the management layer across four existing pods (~30 people today) and scale the organization to 60–80 engineers over the next few years. What You Will Lead * Engineering Pods: The engineering foundation for our Agentic AI and petascale Big Data platform * Team scale-up: Grow from ~30 engineers across 4 pods to 60–80 people, building the management structure as you go * Global team: A Prague-centered organization with team members also in Vietnam and the US Responsibilities * Establish and scale the leadership infrastructure for four cross-functional engineering pods; identify, mentor, and elevate high-potential talent into formal leadership roles * Scale the organization from ~30 to 60–80 engineers through strategic hiring, onboarding, and team design * Define a long-term technical vision for platform foundations that meet scalability, security, and engineering productivity goals; own the roadmap and deliver against it * Be present in the work: sit with engineers during technical incidents, mediate architectural decisions, and stay close to the code and systems * Drive cross-functional collaboration with Product Management and other engineer
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