Software Engineer - Full Stack

About Prelude

Prelude is the only R&D platform built exclusively for animal health and nutrition. Our mission is to accelerate the development of life-saving medicines, devices, and nutrition for animals through smarter technology and superior service. Study designs are becoming more complex every year, making research more daunting and labor-intensive for animal health R&D teams. Prelude's platform makes complex research easy with the industry's most flexible, user-friendly technology, purpose-built for animal health studies and automating 90%+ of data management work.

Description

We are seeking a motivated, hands-on Software Engineer to join our engineering team. In this role you will collaborate closely with other engineers, DevOps, product managers, and QA to build and ship features that matter to Prelude's customers.

This is an individual contributor role built for someone who is genuinely excellent in the full web development stack. Depending on what we're building, you may spend a week fully immersed in Next.js crafting a complex UI, the next week deep in the Node.js/Express.js backend, or anywhere in between. The key word is fully - we need someone who can go deep on whichever layer the work demands.

This role is hybrid (Tuesday-Thursday in office) and is based in Austin, Texas.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain full-stack features across our Next.js frontend and Node.js/Express.js backend
• Design and implement RESTful APIs that are clean, well-documented, and secure
• Write thorough unit and integration tests - quality and reliability are non-negotiable here
• Leverage AI coding tools (Claude, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar) as a core part of your engineering workflow.
• Collaborate with product and design to translate requirements into polished features
• Participate in code reviews, giving and receiving constructive feedback
• Build software that runs in and interacts with services on AWS using ECS, Lambda, S3, API Gateway, and related services
• Help identify and address performance bottlenecks, bugs, and accumulating technical debt

Requirements

• Experience: 3+ years of professional software development building production SaaS applications
• Frontend (must be strong): Deep, production-level proficiency in Next.js and React - component architecture, state management, performance optimization, and UI polish.
• Backend (must be strong): Strong experience with Node.js and Express.js, building and maintaining APIs and services.
• Cloud: Practical, hands-on AWS experience (ECS, Lambda, S3, API Gateway, or equivalent)
• Testing: A genuine commitment to writing tests - unit and integration
• AI Fluency: Hands-on experience across the full spectrum of AI-assisted development - chat, inline code completion, and agentic workflows (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor Agents, GitHub Copilot).
• APIs: Solid understanding of RESTful API design, authentication (JWT/OAuth), and security best practices
• Collaboration: Comfortable in Git, agile workflows, and cross-functional teams
• Communication: Strong written and verbal communication skills

Preferred

• Mobile: React Native or Expo experience for building cross-platform mobile applications
• MongoDB experience - schema design, querying, and aggregation pipelines
• TypeScript fluency across frontend and backend
• Familiarity with event-driven architectures (SQS, SNS, EventBridge)
• Experience with Redis, Elasticsearch, or other specialized data stores
• Experience in a startup or fast-paced SaaS product environment
• Exposure to regulated industries (life sciences, healthcare, fintech)