Founding Robotics & Automation Engineer

Axiom • South San Francisco, CA

6h

About The Position

Axiom is hiring a Founding Robotics & Automation Engineer to build the software and robotics behind its automated biology laboratory. The role will help create a high-throughput lab that generates high-quality experimental data to predict human outcomes. Axiom’s platform combines human cell systems, imaging, transcriptomics, mass spectrometry, and drug metabolism measurements, with AI agents that use experimental data and other sources to predict drug toxicity and inform safer drug design.

The engineer will build laboratory automation from the ground up, developing systems to control, orchestrate, and monitor instruments, robotics, and experimental workflows. The role involves integrating scientific instruments into end-to-end workflows, translating biological assays into reliable automated protocols with scientists, and creating infrastructure for scheduling, execution, monitoring, recovery, quality control, and complete experimental records. The engineer will optimize workflows for throughput, reproducibility, data quality, and minimal human intervention, and help transfer automated assays across Axiom’s global network of partner laboratories.

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

Responsibilities

• Build an extraordinarily automated, high-throughput biology lab 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 closely 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 extreme 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