Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2025)

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital | Principal Software Engineer, Rust Genomics Infrastructure | Memphis, TN | ONSITE or REMOTE | https://www.stjude.org/

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is hiring Rust software engineers to rebuild the genomics ecosystem in Rust. We work at the intersection of computer science and genomics, and we're trying to build a better foundation upon which genomics can be done using Rust. Come work with the individuals that wrote the Rust-based bioinformatics library, noodles (https://github.com/zaeleus/noodles), sprocket (https://github.com/stjude-rust-labs/wdl and https://github.com/stjude-rust-labs/sprocket), as well as many other projects (https://github.com/stjude-rust-labs).

NOTE that prior experience in bioinformatics or biology is NOT required for any of the positions below. You must be interested in learning though! If you'd like to get a sense of what you'd be learning, check out the guide we wrote to teach software engineers about genomics here: https://learngenomics.dev.

* Principal Software Engineer: https://talent.stjude.org/careers/jobs/JR4161?lang=en-us

With any questions, email me at clay.mcleod@stjude.org.

> A reasonable estimate of the current salary range is $125,840 - $238,160 per year for the role of Senior Staff / Principal Software Engineer, Rust Genomics.

The market for principal engineers with Rust experience has _really_ shifted it seems over the past 24 months. $125k was graduation salary rates a few years ago, not someone 10-20 years in.

It’s a support role for a researchers: the institute makes probably zero profit.

A six figure salary seems generous, ask how much the postdocs are getting paid there. Their skills are more rare than rust for sure.

Though we are a non-profit research institute, I don’t want that to be an excuse here: I’m looking to hire the very best software engineers to build a new foundation for all of genomics. That’s not a small task, and I certainly don’t want folks to feel like their careers are hindered by working on such an important and hard problem. As I outlined above, I think we are hitting that mark on being competitive at face value today. I do appreciate the sentiment though! Postdocs are vastly underappreciated, and we do work right alongside many.

Another very important note: it’s definitely not a support role. This is a role where our team owns the intellectual contribution of what needs building and how it’s built. Just wanted to make sure that’s clear!

The very top end of that range is normal in todays market, but it'd be paired with ~50-100% of salary in Bonuses / Equity.

So it really depends on what the rest of the comp looks like.