Senior Software Engineer, Autonomous Lab

The role

Senior Software Engineers will build Catalyst, the software platform powering the Autonomous Lab. This includes work on hardware driver interfaces, orchestration, data APIs, and AI-enabled agentic workflows.

What you will do

• Scope, design, and deliver large or complex software features end-to-end.
• Own components and subsystems across the full lifecycle.
• Identify and drive architectural improvements.
• Serve as a technical authority within the team.
• Partner with scientists, operators, and other engineering teams.
• Define and evolve interfaces and contracts.
• Participate in design reviews and technical discussions.
• Develop and maintain rigorous automated tests.
• Build observability and fault-tolerance into systems.
• Mentor less senior engineers.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5 years of experience in a software development role, with demonstrated ownership of complex systems or features.
• Strong proficiency in Python.
• Experience designing and operating production software with real users and real uptime expectations.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.

Nice to have

• Familiarity with laboratory automation, robotics, or scientific instrumentation.
• Experience building agentic systems, LLM-backed applications, or tool-use frameworks (LangChain, MCP, function calling, etc.).
• Experience with scheduling, optimization, or operations research (constraint programming, MILP, heuristics).
• Experience with hardware communication protocols (RS-232, USB, TCP/IP, OPC-UA, SiLA2) or driver development.
• Experience with specialized device software libraries such as HL8, Terapagos, and Stratum v2.
• Strong relational database skills (PostgreSQL) and experience with schema design and query performance.
• Experience with Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS, Azure), or CI/CD and release engineering.
• Experience deploying and supporting software in customer environments, including on-prem.
• Experience with event-streaming systems (Kafka, Temporal) or data warehousing (ClickHouse, BigQuery, Snowflake).
• Proficiency with Git and experience working within agile methodologies and CI/CD pipelines.

Benefits

• Company stock awards
• Medical, dental & vision coverage
• Health spending accounts
• Voluntary benefits
• Leave of absence policies
• 401(k) program with employer contribution
• 8 paid holidays
• Full-week winter shutdown
• Unlimited Paid Time Off policy

Before you apply

• Must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.
• Unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of H-1B visas at this time.
• Requires regular on-site attendance to Boston office 5 days a week.

About the company

Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world to answer challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Their bioengineers use an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.