Senior Systems Engineer

Nucleus Capital I. GMBH; Greater London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading biotechnology firm in London seeks a Systems Engineer to enhance the Liquid Brain platform. This role involves extensive integration of hardware, firmware, and software, focusing on delivering reliable biophysical data collection systems. Candidates should have experience with optical and fluidic systems, proficiency in Python, and thrive in a dynamic startup environment. The position includes competitive compensation and benefits, along with opportunities for growth within a varied team of experts.

Benefits

Competitive compensation + stock options

Private health insurance

Bi-weekly team lunches

Access to cutting-edge science

Qualifications

• Experience bringing multi-component systems from prototype to scaled deployment.
• Strong knowledge of optical, fluidic systems or electrical engineering.
• Proficient in Python for hardware control and data collection.

Responsibilities

• Lead hardware integration across key modules of the Liquid Brain system.
• Define and implement automated test frameworks and calibration protocols.
• Collaborate with scientists and teams for firmware and system alignment.

Skills

System integration

Python

Documentation discipline

Attention to detail

Tools

Optical systems

Fluidic systems

Job description

About Apoha

At Apoha, we are building the Liquid Brain® — a programmable physical sensing platform creating rich, multidimensional fingerprints of materials to unlock faster and smarter material design. Our mission is to redefine how materials are sensed, understood, and designed across industries.

Why Join Us?

We’re Apoha, the team behind the Liquid Brain®.

We're pioneering Sensory Intelligence by decoding molecular behaviour. The first step in our journey to giving machines the senses they never had? Building a Liquid Brain® platform capable of improving life-saving drugs, by assessing the developability of antibodies earlier (those proteins our immune system makes to fight off bacteria and viruses).

We’re a group of scientists, engineers, and operators who’ve built and launched successful products at Goldman Sachs, Apple, Amazon, and published 50+ high impact research papers across biophysics, materials science, and thermodynamics—and been featured by Scientific American as one of “13 Discoveries That Could Change Everything”.

At Apoha, science isn’t just the foundation of our product—it’s woven into our every day. Whether it’s a journal club over coffee, a spirited scientific discussion unravelling a complex problem, or a full-company Quarter Demo Day that sparks wild new ideas, we’ve built a place where academic rigor meets startup energy.

Our team is small, flat, and talent-dense across disciplines. We gravitate towards people who are collaborative, curious, and take pride in owning their work end-to-end. We enjoy spirited debate, thinking way beyond the state of the art, and building products that could change how we understand biological materials—forever. We believe in the power of on-site collaboration, and our UK-based team works together in our London office to foster creativity, speed, and connection.

Our investors include Redalpine, Acequia Capital, Seedcamp, Nucleus Capital, Plug and Play, Wilbe and others—and we’re just getting started.

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation + stock options
• Private health insurance
• Bi-weekly team lunches + regular socials
• The rare chance to shape the DNA of a company
• Access to cutting-edge science, a stellar team, and the chance to change the game

At Apoha, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We strongly encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds, including those from underrepresented groups in tech and science.

The Role

We are seeking a Systems Engineer with experience taking complex systems to production, integrating multi-domain hardware elements into robust, scalable products. This role sits at the heart of our Liquid Brain, where precision hardware, advanced firmware, and cloud based data analytics and intelligence converge to transform biophysical data collection into a seamless, automated process.

You will be the person who understands how every subsystem interacts, behaves, and evolves — ensuring the Liquid Brain becomes a robust, deployable instrument ready for real-world use. This role is deeply hands-on: you’ll work across hardware, firmware, and software interfaces, driving clarity, testability, and refinement at every level.

Your goal is to make the entire system greater than the sum of its parts — balancing speed and rigor, design and deployment, iteration and reliability.

What you'll do

• Lead hardware integration efforts across all key modules of the Liquid Brain system.
• Define and implement automated test frameworks and calibration protocols to ensure performance consistency across modules and builds.
• Collaborate with applications scientists, software and data science teams to align firmware interfaces (often Python-based) with system APIs and backend controls.
• Own triage, diagnostics, and version management, ensuring systems remain testable, traceable, and upgradeable.
• Work with external partners and suppliers to transition from bench-top prototypes to deployable, scalable hardware modules.
• Establish best practices for system validation, documentation, and traceability during assembly and deployment.
• Design and execute integration and endurance tests, tracking performance drift and identifying early signs of component degradation.
• Contribute to hardware system design reviews, ensuring manufacturability and serviceability.
• Support deployments and field testing of Liquid Brain systems with external partners and early customers.

Who You Are

You’re obsessed with the craft of making complex systems work beautifully — the kind of engineer who notices timing jitter in a motor trace, or a tiny lag between optical capture and fluidic trigger, and enjoys solving it elegantly. You balance precision with pragmatism, and can see both the micro and macro — from pin-level signals to full-system orchestration.

You thrive in multidisciplinary environments where attention to detail is the difference between a lab experiment and a production-ready system.

Important to Have

• Proven experience bringing a multi-component scientific or industrial system from prototype to scaled deployment.
• Strong working knowledge of at least two of the following:
  • Optical systems (imaging, spectroscopy, or laser-based setups)
  • Fluidic systems (pumps, valves, microfluidics, or reagent control)
  • Electrical Engineering (Basic AC/DC power, signal processing)
  • Scientific instruments (HPLC, spectrophotometers, or similar)
• Proficiency in Python for hardware control, data collection, and firmware-level diagnostics.
• Comfort operating in a startup environment, where flexibility, rapid iteration, and hands-on problem solving are key.
• Strong documentation discipline—able to generate wiring diagrams, test logs, and integration guides that scale across modules.