Founding Robotics & Automation Engineer

Axiom • South San Francisco, CA

21h

About The Position

Axiom is hiring a Founding Robotics & Automation Engineer to build the software and robotics for an advanced automated biology laboratory that generates high-quality experimental data. Axiom develops a human liver safety platform combining human cell systems, imaging, transcriptomics, mass spectrometry, and drug metabolism measurements, with AI systems that use experimental and clinical data to predict human drug toxicity. The company works with pharmaceutical companies and frontier AI labs to improve drug discovery and development.

The engineer will build an automated, high-throughput laboratory from the ground up; develop software that controls, orchestrates, and monitors instruments, robotics, and experimental workflows; and integrate scientific equipment into complete automated workflows. The role works closely with scientists to automate complex biological assays and develops systems for scheduling, execution, monitoring, error recovery, quality control, and comprehensive experimental data capture. The work also includes optimizing workflows for throughput, reproducibility, and data quality, minimizing human intervention, and transferring advanced automated assays across Axiom’s global partner laboratory network.

Requirements

• Exceptional coding ability and a strong foundation in software engineering.
• Ability to bridge software, robotics, hardware, and biology to build complete automated experimental systems.
• Strong focus on reliability, reproducibility, data quality, and attention to detail.
• Strong systems thinking and ability to understand and optimize complex end-to-end laboratory workflows.
• Comfort working hands-on with unfamiliar instruments, debugging hardware, and solving difficult integration problems.
• Ability to take ambitious projects from concept to fully operational systems with minimal oversight.
• Strong ability to communicate and collaborate with scientists, engineers, and laboratory operators.

Nice To Haves

• Experience or interest in Python, software engineering, APIs, asynchronous programming, and distributed systems.
• Familiarity with PyLabRobot, Hamilton VENUS, Tecan EVOware, Opentrons, SiLA 2, and laboratory instrument APIs.
• Knowledge of laboratory automation, robotics, motion control, industrial automation, and hardware integration.
• Experience with liquid handling, automated plate movement, incubators, robotic arms, and integrated workcells.
• Familiarity with high-throughput screening, high-content imaging, cell culture, sequencing, and mass spectrometry workflows.
• Knowledge of experiment orchestration, scheduling, instrument communication, data capture, and observability.
• Mechanical, electrical, and systems engineering skills for troubleshooting and integrating laboratory equipment.
• Familiarity with laboratory information management systems (LIMS), laboratory execution systems, and experimental data infrastructure.
• Drive to push beyond conventional laboratory automation and develop radically better approaches to experimental science.
• Strong technical curiosity about robotics, software, biology, and drug discovery.

Responsibilities

• Build an automated, high-throughput biology laboratory from the ground up.
• Develop software to control, orchestrate, and monitor laboratory instruments, robotics, and experimental workflows.
• Integrate liquid handlers, robotic arms, incubators, imaging systems, sequencers, mass spectrometers, and other scientific instruments into end-to-end automated workflows.
• Work with scientists to translate complex biological assays into reliable, scalable automated protocols.
• Develop systems for experiment scheduling, execution, monitoring, error recovery, and quality control.
• Build infrastructure to capture complete experimental records, including instrument commands, metadata, logs, timestamps, and raw data.
• Optimize laboratory workflows for throughput, reproducibility, data quality, and minimal human intervention.
• Transfer and automate advanced biological assays across Axiom’s global network of partner laboratories.

What This Job Offers

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