Benchling Company Culture & Values

How does your culture influence hiring and retention as you grow?

Our mission does a lot of the heavy lifting. We’re working to unlock biotechnology and help bring ten times more life-saving therapies to the world. That attracts a specific kind of person — someone who wants the intellectual challenge of building enterprise software but also wants their work to matter beyond the screen. When your product helps scientists accelerate drug discovery, you don’t have to manufacture meaning.

We also rally around a concept we call “team science.” It’s our way of describing how we work: like a high-performing sports team that believes deeply in what science can do for the world. That framing shapes everything from how we run interviews to how we celebrate wins. It gives candidates a clear picture of what they’re joining and reminds us who we want to be.

Finally, one of our earliest leadership principles is “recruit and develop the best.” It’s not just a hiring mandate — it’s a retention strategy. When you surround talented people with other talented people and invest in their growth, they tend to stay. Excellence attracts excellence.

What values or behaviors most define your company culture today?

Curiosity runs through everything here. One of our leadership principles is “stay curious,” and it’s not a poster on the wall — it’s how people actually operate. We’re building for scientists, so asking good questions matters. That shows up in how engineers dig into the biology behind what we’re building, how product teams challenge assumptions and how people treat mistakes as chances to learn rather than something to hide.

We also live by “play for the front of the jersey.” It means the mission comes first — ahead of personal agendas or team politics. In practice, people step up for problems that aren’t technically theirs, share credit generously and make decisions based on what’s best for Benchling and our customers. There’s not a lot of ego here.

And we’re direct with each other. Feedback flows freely because people want the work to be excellent. That kind of honesty only works when there’s trust underneath it — and there is. People know the feedback comes from wanting everyone to succeed.

Can you share an example of how your team recognizes or celebrates one another’s contributions?

Twice a year, we run Leadership Principle Awards where anyone in the company can nominate a colleague who’s embodied one of our principles — Stay Curious, Play for the Front of the Jersey and the others. The nominations come from everywhere: peers, cross-functional partners, direct reports nominating their managers. It’s not top-down.

What makes it meaningful is how we share it. At our all-hands, we ask nominators to record a short video explaining why they nominated that person. So it’s not just “congratulations, here’s a trophy” — it’s a colleague telling the whole company, in their own words, what that person did and why it mattered. It puts the winner and their work on stage for a moment.

Winners also get a cash prize, which is a nice way to say thank you. But honestly, the videos are the part people remember. Hearing a teammate describe how you showed up for them — that sticks with you.

To me, successful cross-functional collaboration hinges on well-organized meetings and clear documentation. Ensuring the right representatives are present and that everyone is in alignment on decisions and actionables by the end of each meeting helps to keep folks on the same page and maintain momentum.