Senior Automation Engineer (Sr. Engineer II)

The Role:

Generate:Biomedicines is seeking an experienced and highly motivated Senior Automation Engineer to join our team at the interface of lab instrumentation, integrated workcells, custom hardware, and protein therapeutics discovery.

This role will be central to sustaining and advancing Generate’s wet lab platform, with particular emphasis on automated workflows spanning DNA production, protein production, cell culture, and screening & validation assays. Just as importantly, this senior engineer will extend Generate’s capabilities beyond immediate automation support by building and integrating custom instrument capabilities into the wet lab ecosystem and leading adjacent engineering efforts where thoughtful hardware, fluidics, or systems integration can unlock better science.

The role serves as the automation engineering lead both as an individual contributor and the direct manager of automation engineers. The ideal candidate will bring strong expertise in liquid handling, workcell automation, scripting, wet lab agentic deployment, and method development, along with experience building, adapting, or integrating instrumentation in close partnership with scientists and the rest of the engineering team. This role is well-suited for someone who can execute at a high technical level while thinking end-to-end about building scalable support through training, documentation, AI, and handoff practices that increase scientist independence. As a central communicator in the lab, the role will be tasked with consistently identifying areas of the lab that can be enhanced with engineering solutions.

Here's how you will contribute:

• Design, build, and integrate custom instrument capabilities into Generate’s wet lab platform, including in-house-built hardware, fluidic systems, or related technologies into scientist-facing workflows.

• Own critical automation and instrumentation problems end-to-end, from method design and system improvement through live troubleshooting on active runs, vendor coordination, documentation, and knowledge transfer.

• Drive reliability, troubleshooting, and method development for DNA/protein production and assay/readout workflows on integrated workcells, while improving throughput, parallelization, and data quality across platform and pipeline programs.

• Partner closely with scientists to provide high-quality in-lab support, unblock experiments quickly, and identify new automation- or engineering-enabled capabilities that reduce timelines for production, scale-up, and future platform workflows.

• Identify and prioritize lab automation projects across the automation engineering team and seek out key stakeholders as collaborators

• Manage a team of automation engineers in both day-to-day activities and long-term projects providing guidance and proper resourcing to their efforts

The Ideal Candidate will have:

• BS + with 7+ years industry experience in lab automation and analytical & process instrumentation development, MS with 5+ years industry experience, or PhD in engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, life sciences, or a related field.

• A proven track record of leadership within a wet lab and within an engineering team both via project management and direct reports

• Strong experience with liquid handlers and integrated workcells, including platforms such as Biomek, Tecan, Lynx, Hamilton, Opentrons, HighRes, Retisoft, and/or similar systems.

• Experience owning workflows end-to-end, from method design and execution through debugging, documentation, and operational support.

• A strong drive to proactively hand-off workflows to scientists in a way that improves adoption, increases autonomy, and effective use of automation tools.

• Exceptional communication skills and proactivity to facilitate interactions between scientists, engineers, lab operations, and other stakeholders that span a range of technical and scientific languages.

• Experience developing and/or deploying wet lab-facing agentic applications, e.g. closed-loop experimental systems.

• Experience building, integrating, or supporting custom instrumentation, fluidic systems, and/or microfluidic devices in an R&D environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting DNA production, protein production, protein purification, cell culture, functional & binding assays, and/or related molecular biology workflows at scale.

• Significant experience with HighRes, Retisoft, and/or other advanced scheduling and orchestration systems and integrated hardware environments.

• Experience supporting platform transfer, vendor coordination, user training, or expansion of methods across multiple instruments and lab locations.

• Experience working in a highly collaborative, matrixed research environment where automation, platform engineering, and discovery teams are tightly integrated.

Who Will Love This Job:

• You are motivated working in fast-paced and dynamic research environments, with a drive to frequently move out of your immediate comfort zone and learn new things.

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