Senior Systems Engineer

BiomeSense•Chicago, IL

32d

About The Position

BiomeSense is a pioneering life sciences startup harnessing the gut microbiome to revolutionize personalized medicine. With our breakthrough technologies GutLab and MetaBiome, we're enabling unprecedented insights into the microbiome for human health. We partner with leading institutions including UCSF, UCSD, NIH, and the University of Chicago, and are backed by investors such as LabCorp Ventures, Bluestein Ventures, Seerave Foundation, and Emil Capital Partners. We're looking for a versatile, hands-on engineer who thinks in systems — comfortable moving between electronics, firmware, fluidics, and mechanical interfaces, and equally at ease at a debug bench and in a requirements review. You'll be the technical connective tissue across hardware development for our next-generation GutLab instrument.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Electrical, Systems, Mechanical, or Biomedical Engineering (or related), and 5+ years of hardware or instrument development experience.
Demonstrated work across disciplines on electromechanical systems — fluent enough to connect EE, firmware, mechanical, and fluidics engineers.
Strong hands-on instincts: bench debug, scopes, multimeters, soldering, wiring, prototype assembly.
Experience defining requirements and tracing them through verification.
Experience designing and executing V&V test plans on hardware or instruments.
Familiarity with risk management practices (FMEA, hazard analysis, or similar).
Comfort with scripting (Python or similar) for instrument control, test automation, or data analysis.
Organized, proactive, and ready to thrive in a startup environment.

Nice To Haves

EE/EEHW background with comfort reading schematics, working with embedded electronics, and interfacing with firmware teams.
Experience with diagnostic instruments, lab automation, fluidic systems, or medical devices.
Exposure to FDA design controls (21 CFR 820.30), ISO 14971, or IEC 62304.
Background in quality engineering, validation engineering, or formal requirements management.
Experience transitioning a product from development into design transfer and production

Responsibilities

Systems Integration: Liaise between electronics, firmware, fluidics, and mechanical subsystems. Define interfaces and ensure the whole instrument behaves correctly.
Requirements & V&V: Capture and maintain system requirements, plan and execute verification, build fixtures, and own the question of "did we actually prove it works?"
Hands-on Bench Work: Integrate, bring up, and debug electromechanical prototypes across hardware, firmware, and fluidics.
Risk Management: Identify and track system-level risks and failure modes; drive mitigations through design and test.
Test Automation & Documentation: Build test setups and scripts; produce clear requirements, protocols, and SOPs that keep the team moving without losing rigor.