Senior Scheduler & Optimization Engineer, Autonomous Lab

Ginkgo Bioworks; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 134,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock awards

Medical, dental & vision coverage

401(k) with employer contribution

Unlimited PTO

Job summary

Ginkgo Bioworks is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Autonomous Lab (Scheduling & Optimization) to design and implement scheduling systems for robotic automation cells. The role emphasizes production scheduling, optimization, and alignment with data contracts across teams, located on-site in Boston.

The ideal candidate will have strong Python skills, experience with OR/constraint programming, and a track record building scalable scheduling solutions in a research-to-production

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience in a software development role, demonstrating significant work on scheduling, optimization, or planning systems.
• Strong proficiency in Python.
• Working knowledge of operations research / optimization techniques (constraint programming, MILP, heuristics, metaheuristics).
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and evolve the scheduling algorithms that orchestrate work across robotic lab automation cells.
• Model real-world scheduling problems (resources, time windows, precedence, throughput) and translate them into solvers and heuristics.
• Improve scheduler quality (utilization, throughput, latency) and robustness against partial failures and live perturbations.
• Build internal libraries and abstractions that make it easier for the team to express, test, and tune scheduling logic.
• Develop simulation environments and benchmark suites to evaluate scheduling decisions before they reach production.
• Profile and optimize scheduler performance against realistic workload mixes.
• Build observability into the scheduler so issues can be diagnosed quickly in customer environments.
• Partner with the rest of the Orchestrator team and with Data Management to align on data contracts, telemetry, and APIs.
• Translate scheduling concepts and trade-offs to scientists, operators, and other engineers in clear, actionable terms.

Skills

Scheduling & optimization

Python

Operations Research

Communication

Collaboration

Education

Bachelor's/Master's in CS/OR/Industrial Engineering

Tools

OR-Tools / Gurobi / CPLEX

Job description

Ginkgo Bioworks is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Autonomous Lab (Scheduling & Optimization) to design and implement scheduling systems for robotic automation cells. The role emphasizes production scheduling, optimization, and alignment with data contracts across teams, located on-site in Boston.

The ideal candidate will have strong Python skills, experience with OR/constraint programming, and a track record building scalable scheduling solutions in a research-to-production