Zach Charlop-powers
Principal Software Engineer, Applied AI at Lila Sciences
New York City Metropolitan Area United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolZach Charlop-powers is a Principal Software Engineer and applied AI specialist with 11 years of experience at the intersection of computational biology and production-grade engineering. He has led teams to deliver data products and discovery platforms across biotech and drug discovery—most recently directing computational protein design at Ginkgo and now building applied AI solutions at Lila Sciences. A co-founder of a metagenomics drug discovery startup and former director at Zymergen, he combines hands-on pipeline and cloud engineering with domain expertise in sequencing, biosynthetic gene clusters, and protein design. Zach contributes to open-source bioinformatics infrastructure—improving Bioconda packaging and clarifying Rust ML docs for Hugging Face’s candle—demonstrating a rare mix of build/release, documentation, and scientific coding skills. Based in the New York City area, he pairs academic training (PhD and postdoc in computational/metagenomic discovery) with entrepreneurial pragmatism to accelerate wet-lab science through software. Colleagues describe him as someone who consistently turns complex biological data problems into reproducible, scalable engineering outcomes.
11 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Post-Doctoral Computational/Metagenomic Drug Discovery, Post-Doctoral Computational/Metagenomic Drug Discovery at The Rockefeller UniversityBS, BS at University of Wisconsin-MadisonPhD Biochemistry Biophysics and Molecular Biology, PhD Biochemistry Biophysics and Molecular Biology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Github Skills (15)
bioinformatics10
conda10
bash10
rust10
package-management10
build-automation10
documentation10
makefile9
gnu-make9
transformers9
machine-learning8
python8
yaml7
docker6
dockers6
Programming languages (21)
Github contributions (5)
bioconda/bioconda-recipes
Jan 2016 - Dec 2022
Conda recipes for the bioconda channel.
Role in this project:
Automation Engineer / Build & Release Engineer
Automation Engineer / Build & Release EngineerContributions:67 commits, 140 PRs, 60 pushes in 7 years
Contributions summary:Zach primarily contributed to the build and packaging processes of bioinformatics tools within the Bioconda ecosystem. They modified build scripts, updated package dependencies, and addressed issues related to compilation and installation. Their contributions included fixing build failures, adapting to new compiler systems, and making adjustments for different operating systems and environments. The user demonstrated a strong understanding of conda package management and build automation.
recipescondabiocondabioinformaticspackage-management
huggingface/candle
Sep 2023 - Mar 2025
Minimalist ML framework for Rust
Role in this project:Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:10 PRs, 15 comments, 2 issues in 1 year 6 months
Contributions summary:Zach primarily focused on enhancing the documentation of the `candle` repository. Their contributions include adding module-level documentation for various crates within the project (candle-core, candle-nn, candle-transformers, etc.) and providing links to external resources. They also updated and expanded documentation for specific models within the candle-transformers crate and incorporated interactive examples, enhancing usability.
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