Software Engineer - Internal Systems
Life Scientific \| Dublin or Cambridge \| Starting at €80k + equity
We're a 100-person crop protection company, with approximately 80M turnover. We develop and sell formulations that help farmers protect their crops - backed by solid science, sold at fair prices. \~70 people work out of our Dublin office; our CTO runs a smaller team in Cambridge focused on skunkworks projects.
What you'll build:
Internal systems that run the business - portfolio management tracking hundreds of formulations from R\&D through commercialization, regulatory document systems that work locally instead of being locked in SharePoint, data pipelines pulling market research and regulatory updates, commercial tools sales actually uses.
Right now this data lives in spreadsheets, SharePoint sites, and disconnected databases. Each formulation has regulatory status across multiple markets (US EPA, PMRA Canada, EU), compliance requirements, commercial data, and thousands of supporting documents.
The path:
First: infrastructure work that needs doing. Mass document migrations, data cleanup, tooling consolidation. Heavy but finite - a few months of unglamorous grinding to set proper foundations.
Then the fun part: greenfield systems from scratch. Clean slate, clean data models, modern stack. You'll design the architecture for portfolio management rebuilt properly, regulatory systems that work the way they should, tools people actually want to use. Full creative control, no legacy constraints, building internal products that set the standard for how this should work.
Stack:
Full-stack TypeScript - Next.js, Bun, React, Postgres mostly. You'll make architectural decisions, decide what to build vs buy, ship working software people use daily.
We use AI where it helps: Cursor to ship faster, Vercel AI SDK for workflows, LLMs for document parsing. The skill is knowing where it helps and where it doesn't.
You should be:
Smart and learn fast (we don't care about years of experience - our CTO is 23)
Someone who takes ownership of messy problems and makes them clean
Able to think architecturally, not just ship features
Good judgment about what matters most
Especially good if you've hacked on side projects, integrated AI into real problems, or think about files over apps and local-first patterns.
What this isn't:
If you need heavy process, detailed roadmaps, or someone to tell you exactly what to build - this isn't it.
If you want high autonomy but can't handle high ownership - this isn't it.
How we work:
Small teams (1-3 people), short cycles (1-3 weeks). Ship useful v1s fast, iterate with real feedback. Clear writing because writing is thinking. Internal tools treated as real products.
We learn from how these companies think:
Linear - Tiny team shipping excellent product consistently. Their superpower is scoping down: design work so 1-3 people can ship in 1-3 weeks. Forces prioritization, maintains momentum. See especially: how they scope projects and their craft tag on making deliberate choices about polish, debt, and quality at speed.
Stripe - Won because developers wanted to integrate them: clean APIs, docs that felt like product, compressed time-to-first-success. They treat communication as infrastructure and make craft non-negotiable. Read Patrick Collison on culture that prizes details - leadership has to make this a priority or it doesn't happen.
Valve - \~350 people, \~$17B revenue. The model matters more than the numbers: self-directed teams, no permanent structure, work moves to where the value is. A few things from their handbook that apply here:
"We are all stewards of our long-term relationship with our customers" - when everyone owns the outcome, nobody can hide behind "not my department"
"Strong projects are ones in which people can see demonstrated value; they staff up easily" - in a free market of ideas inside a company, value is the only real currency
Rauno's craft gallery - Quick way to calibrate taste. Not about copying aesthetics - about internalizing hierarchy, restraint, polish that serves function.
We're not a payments platform or a game studio - we're a crop protection company in Ireland. But we care about the same things: doing work properly, moving fast, creating leverage through clarity and craft.
Details:
Reports to: CTO
Location: Dublin or Cambridge (hybrid/office-first)
Compensation Starts at €80k base + equity