Halo Jobs in Naperville, IL (NOW HIRING)

Company Overview

Our mission at Halo is to move science forward. A Fast Company "World Changing Idea" and one of Wellfound's Top 10 B2B Startups of 2025, Halo’s platform connects scientists directly with companies to bring new innovations to the world. We work with the R&D teams at global, iconic companies – including Bayer, P&G and PepsiCo – on topics ranging from sustainability to human health. Since going live in January 2020, more than 16,000 scientists and science-led startups from 130+ countries have joined. We are venture-backed by Asymmetric Capital, Village Global, Lightbank, AngelList Ventures (invests in top .1% of startups), Marketplace Capital, Lenny Rachitsky’s Air Angels (Airbnb angel group) and other top-tier investors.

• Learn about our new NSF-funded initiative

• Read our reviews on Glassdoor

• Watch "Why Work Here" episode with Halo CEO

Role Overview

Halo is looking for a Software Engineer to join our team and help grow the platform from early-stage product/market fit to massive scale. While the opportunity in front of us is large - the $2 trillion global R&D market - your work will also help accelerate scientific innovations that impact our world.

As a Software Engineer with a focus on Growth, you'll build new features, instrument those features and report on their impact, and improve our product development cycle.

Responsibilities:

• You'll work alongside self-starters interested in solving real-world problems and streamlining the inefficiencies of external partnering for Fortune 500 companies.

• Take point on complex product initiatives, decompose them into smaller pieces, and run them to completion with minimal supervision

• Design flexible, maintainable code to execute against the vision and roadmap

• Safeguard code quality on your team, reviewing others' code with an eye to performance and maintainability

• Work closely with designers and product managers to distill complex business problems into elegant technical solutions.

• Collaborate with a close-knit engineering team that ships new code into production multiple times a week.

Who you are:

Our tech stack is primarily Ruby on Rails and React. We also use Redis, Heroku, Postgres, and Typesense. While knowledge of our stack is a plus, it’s not a requirement.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent experience

• 6+ years of experience (or can show equivalent depth) writing software in our tech stack and a strong engineering background

• A love of simple, well-tested code that is easy to extend and hard to break

• Strong product intuition and product-minded engineering judgment, with the ability to understand how technical decisions impact user experience

• Knowledge of best practices across the development lifecycle, including coding standards, code reviews, CI/CD, testing, operations, and the effective use of modern AI tools to significantly improve engineering productivity.

• Exceptional cross-functional communicator, capable of simplifying complex technical concepts for sales, GTM, design, and executive stakeholders.

• Understanding of performance tradeoffs, load balancing, and operational issues

• Proven ability to handle ambiguity and competing priorities, managing multiple projects simultaneously in a fast-paced environment.

Nice to Have:

• You have a science-related degree or industry experience in science or health.

• Hands‑on product‑management experience or strong product instincts

• Experience working for companies offering B2B marketplaces, applicant tracking systems, CRMs, or project management tools.

What we offer:

• Share in the upside. Early employees have an outsized impact on a startup’s success. It’s only fair that you receive meaningful equity in return.

• Donate to research. Make a donation to scientific research you care about and we’ll match your donation dollar-for-dollar.

• Volunteer for research. Participate in a research study through ResearchMatch, a nonprofit funded by the NIH, and get a $200 bonus check.

• Stay healthy. We don’t ever want your health to be a source of stress and offer top-of-the-line medical, dental, and vision benefits.

• Escape for the Winter. From December to March, Halo will fly you anywhere in the country to escape the cold and get some Vitamin D.