Robotics Engineer - Lab Automation for AI-Driven Biotech

Xaira Therapeutics, Inc.; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity options

Mentorship from leaders

Interdisciplinary team

Open, innovative environment

Job summary

Xaira Therapeutics, Inc. in South San Francisco is hiring a Robotics Engineer to build and integrate robotic systems for high‑throughput biology workflows.

You will work closely with biologists, automation engineers, software engineers, and robotics experts to translate manual laboratory processes into robust automated execution. You will develop motion planning, perception, and control logic, integrate lab instruments via APIs, and help create simulation environments for validation.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in CS/Robotics/EE/ME or related field.

Responsibilities

• Build, integrate, and maintain robotics software for robotic arms, mobile robots, sensors, grippers, and laboratory automation devices.
• Develop motion planning, manipulation, perception, and safety logic for robotic systems operating in real laboratory environments.
• Integrate laboratory instruments and devices through APIs, IoT interfaces, schedulers, and custom control software.
• Help build task execution frameworks using state machines, behavior trees, planners, and recovery logic for autonomous lab workflows.
• Benchmark and integrate computer vision methods for object detection, segmentation, tracking, pose estimation, localization, and scene understanding.
• Create and use simulation or digital twin environments for motion validation, workflow testing, synthetic data generation, and system debugging.
• Collaborate with scientists to translate biological and chemical workflows into automated protocols.
• Support multi‑station system integration, automated material handling, sample tracking, validation, logging, and error recovery.
• Work hands‑on with physical hardware to debug real systems, improve reliability, and iterate quickly.
• Evaluate modern AI, autonomy, foundation‑model, reinforcement‑learning, or imitation‑learning approaches where they can improve real robotic lab execution.

Skills

Python

C++

System integration

Hardware/software co-design

Problem solving

Communication with scientists

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field

Tools

ROS2

MoveIt

OpenCV

Gazebo

MuJoCo

Foxglove

Isaac Sim

CAD/3D printing

CUDA

Job description

Xaira Therapeutics, Inc. in South San Francisco is hiring a Robotics Engineer to build and integrate robotic systems for high‑throughput biology workflows.

You will work closely with biologists, automation engineers, software engineers, and robotics experts to translate manual laboratory processes into robust automated execution. You will develop motion planning, perception, and control logic, integrate lab instruments via APIs, and help create simulation environments for validation.