Senior Lab Automation Architect

Biopharma Careers; North Carolina; On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Johnson & Johnson in Spring House, PA, seeks a Principal Laboratory Automation Scientist to define the automation architecture for integrated discovery platforms. You will shape cross-workcell workflows, data provenance, and AI-ready execution to enable autonomous lab capabilities.

You will collaborate with automation engineers and scientists, establishing standards, run states, and scalable interfaces while mentoring teams and guiding technology choices for future automation delivery.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 10+ years, Master's with 8+ years, or PhD with 5+ years of relevant laboratory automation experience.
• Demonstrated understanding of laboratory workflows, sample handling, plate/tube formats, assay execution, consumable preparation, run documentation, and data capture.
• Hands-on or practical experience with automated liquid handlers or integrated laboratory automation equipment.
• Ability to translate scientific workflows into executable automated methods, worklists, run states, exception pathways, and user-facing procedures.
• Working knowledge of sample identity, labware identity, reagent identity, consumable state, barcode traceability, metadata capture, and downstream data requirements.
• Ability to collaborate with scientists, automation engineers, IT, data science, AI, EHS, facilities, vendors, and laboratory operations.

Responsibilities

• Define architecture, standards, interface models, recovery logic, and data requirements across multidisciplinary teams.
• Define cross-workcell laboratory automation architecture spanning requests, instruments, workcells, sample stores, and data systems.
• Lead SDL enablement and AI-ready data practices for autonomous discovery platforms.
• Mentor scientists and influence communities of practice around method robustness, data provenance, automation design, and adoption.
• Support technology evaluations, proofs-of-concept, and vendor assessments for future automation capabilities.
• Contribute to training materials and playbooks; support audit or quality documentation related to automated workflows.

Skills

Laboratory automation

Data provenance

Workflow design

Collaboration

Biologics discovery

Education

Bachelor's degree in Life Science / Analytical Science / Engineering / CS

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

SiLA 2

OPC UA

APIs

Workflow engines

Microservices

Job description

Johnson & Johnson in Spring House, PA, seeks a Principal Laboratory Automation Scientist to define the automation architecture for integrated discovery platforms. You will shape cross-workcell workflows, data provenance, and AI-ready execution to enable autonomous lab capabilities.

You will collaborate with automation engineers and scientists, establishing standards, run states, and scalable interfaces while mentoring teams and guiding technology choices for future automation delivery.