Autonomous Science Lead

The role

The Autonomous Science Lead will lead experimental methods and scientific operations. You will work with instruments, protocols, and experimental results alongside scientists and engineering specialists.

What you will do

• Own experimental methods.
• Select and adapt protocols, design controls and define scientific acceptance criteria.
• Develop automated workflows.
• Assess and qualify instruments, labware and automation with engineering specialists.
• Establish scientific validity.
• Evaluate results, investigate variability and distinguish execution problems from scientific failures.
• Lead laboratory operations.
• Plan staffing, equipment, materials and operating requirements.
• Establish training, documentation and safe working procedures.
• Troubleshoot hands-on at the bench and across instruments, hardware and software.

Required qualifications

• Substantial hands-on experimental work, with ownership of methods, controls, reproducibility and interpretation.
• Experience running automated laboratory operations, including instruments, resources, staffing and quality procedures.
• Practical experience with AI and robotics in laboratory automation or experimental systems.
• Working knowledge of reinforcement learning and model evaluation.
• Ability to work directly at the bench and with instruments, and translate scientific requirements into specifications for engineers.

Nice to have

• Experience building RL environments, robotic benchmarks or model-evaluation tools.
• Scientific leadership in a contract research organisation, research core or shared instrumentation facility.
• Improving experimental reliability, turnaround or cost across different operators, instruments or operating conditions.

Before you apply

• We may use AI-assisted tools to help evaluate applications against the requirements of this role.

About the company

Mecka AI is building the data infrastructure layer for robotics and embodied AI. They design and operate global systems for data capture, data labeling, and hardware-enabled workflows.