Experimental Systems Engineer, Analytical Chemistry

Dayhoff Labs • Cambridge, MA

15h

About The Position

The Experimental Systems Engineer will build new ways to observe liquid-phase chemical reaction networks, including enzymatic and non-enzymatic reactions, as they evolve in real time. The role involves prototyping measurement setups, quickly evaluating whether the resulting measurements are trustworthy and useful, and improving or discarding setups based on what is learned.

The engineer will work with small CSTRs, flow reactors, microfluidic devices, pumps, valves, tubing, flow cells, and autosamplers. They will evaluate analytical technologies and develop Python-based tools for data acquisition, instrument control, signal processing, and visualization. The work will combine continuous measurements with sampled analytical data to reconstruct how chemical mixtures change over time.

This is a hands-on, cross-disciplinary role working closely with chemists, enzymologists, computational scientists, and ML engineers to turn messy experimental signals into useful data. The company is a small, diverse, global team with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, UK, working on AI-enabled research into the origin of life and molecular systems.

Requirements

• Experience building experimental hardware or analytical setups hands-on.
• Comfort with liquid handling systems, including pumps, valves, tubing, flow cells, and troubleshooting leaks, bubbles, fouling, and drift.
• Experience with at least some analytical chemistry methods, such as spectroscopy, chromatography, mass spectrometry, NMR, or electrochemical sensing.
• Practical Python skills for data acquisition, analysis, plotting, and automation.
• Willingness to work across the wet lab, instrument manuals, notebooks, code, and physical prototyping.
• Good judgment about whether a measurement is meaningful or misleading and when an experimental setup needs rebuilding.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Raman, FTIR, UV-Vis, fluorescence, online NMR, LC-MS, HPLC, or MS workflows.
• Lab automation experience using Arduino, Raspberry Pi, LabJack, NI DAQ, serial instrument control, autosamplers, or custom data logging.
• Experience building fast prototypes in a startup, academic lab, instrument company, or hardware-heavy research environment.

Responsibilities

• Design and build prototype systems for monitoring aqueous chemical reaction networks in real time.
• Work with small CSTRs, flow reactors, microfluidic devices, pumps, valves, tubing, flow cells, and autosamplers.
• Evaluate analytical technologies, including Raman, UV-Vis, fluorescence, IR, NMR, LC-MS, HPLC, electrochemical sensing, and low-cost process probes.
• Build Python-based tools for data acquisition, instrument control, signal processing, and visualization.
• Combine continuous measurements with sampled analytical data to reconstruct the time evolution of chemical mixtures.
• Work with chemists, enzymologists, computational scientists, and ML engineers to turn messy signals into useful data.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Education Level: No Education Listed