Automation Engineer

Slope; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 165,000 - 215,000; Full time

Job summary

A pioneering research lab in the Bay Area seeks an Automation Engineer to build and validate automation pipelines for research programs. The role requires engineering or bioengineering expertise with a focus on high throughput experimental setups. You will work closely with teams to ensure the quality and reliability of data generated through automation. Ideal candidates will have hands-on experience in biosciences or engineering and a passion for innovative problem-solving.

Qualifications

• Background in engineering, robotics, or bioengineering with automation experience.
• Experience in high throughput experimental pipelines involving biology.
• Strong communication skills and collaboration with researchers.

Responsibilities

• Build automation pipelines to enhance research programs.
• Define experimental automation needs with program leads.
• Ensure integrity and quality of data from automated pipelines.

Skills

Engineering background

Biological context

Automation engineering

Communication skills

Problem-solving

Education

Degree in Engineering or Biology

Tools

Instrumentation

Data analysis software

Job description

Location

San Francisco Bay Area

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

On-site

Department

Bioengineering

Compensation

• $165K – $215K • Offers Equity

Merge Labs is a frontier research lab with the mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, agency and experience. We’re pursuing this goal by developing fundamentally new approaches to brain-computer interfaces that interact with the brain at high bandwidth, integrate with advanced AI, and are ultimately safe and accessible for anyone to use.

About the team

Merge is tackling some of the most audacious problems in molecular engineering, synthetic biology and neuroscience. Our Research Platform Team builds the experimental capabilities needed to solve these problems with very high speed and rigor. The instruments and pipelines the team builds accelerate molecular assembly, protein expression, mammalian cell culture, advanced microscopy, sequencing, as well as some very unusual custom methods. The team collaborates with program teams to establish and streamline these capabilities, automate wherever it makes sense to do so, and integrate with our data science and machine learning pipelines. We come up with creative approaches to greatly increase throughput and continuously innovate.

About the role

As an Automation Engineer, you will build automation pipelines to enable key research programs to move as quickly as possible. The role will leverage your existing technical and scientific expertise while requiring you to rapidly learn new scientific domains and develop new experimental capabilities. You will collaborate closely with program leads, project scientists, data scientists and engineers to co‑design, implement and scale research pipelines. You will lead and perform work as an individual, and may recruit additional team members as needed to support it.

In this role, you will:

• Partner with program leads and project scientists to define experimental automation needs and key approaches.
• Apply biological context and experimental understanding to guide automation strategy and execution.
• Scope, acquire, build, program and validate instrumentation and software and teach project teams to use them.
• Own the quality, reliability, and integrity of data produced by automated pipelines, including defining and integrating appropriate QC checkpoints.
• Collaborate with data science/ML engineers to integrate metadata tracking, computational design, and analysis into experimental pipelines.
• Collaborate with electrical, mechanical and software engineers to build custom setups.
• Conceive, design, and validate creative automation strategies to improve experimental throughput.
• Serve as an integral member of research project teams and contribute your insights to project design, execution and analysis.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have a background in engineering, robotics or similar field with extensive experience in biology, or a background in biology or bioengineering with extensive experience in automation engineering.
• Have developed high throughput experimental pipelines involving mammalian cell culture, microscopy, molecular assembly, next‑generation sequencing or protein engineering.
• Have built unusual setups that required custom components that you couldn’t get off the shelf.
• Love getting your hands dirty with equipment setup, code writing, biological experiments and data analysis — whatever is needed.
• Love learning new science and developing new capabilities.
• Have worked in a fast‑paced biotech/techbio, ideally startup, environment and loved it.
• Have high agency to initiate and drive efforts, constantly ideate and look to make improvements.
• Have strong communication skills and enjoy collaborating with researchers to help them accelerate their projects.
• Have come up with creative or unexpected solutions to tricky problems.

If you're excited about this role but don't meet every qualification, please apply. As we build, we're hiring for complementary strengths to form a high‑impact team.

Merge Labs does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, family status, ancestry, citizenship, U.S. military (state and federal) and veteran status, or any other legally protected status. It is our intention that all applicants be given equal opportunity and that selection decisions are based on job related factors. We are an equal opportunity employer.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing [e-mail].

Compensation Range: $165K - $215K