Senior Software Engineer - Autonomous Lab Automation

Genentech, Inc.; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 143,000 - 265,000; Full time

Job summary

Genentech is seeking a Senior Software Engineer – Lab Automation to bridge software architecture, frontier AI models, and real-world lab hardware. You will design hardware abstraction layers, integration frameworks, and orchestration engines enabling autonomous, unattended operation of automated workcells at global scale.

You will collaborate with software, automation, and hardware engineers to translate complex scientific protocols into robust, production-grade systems and to ensure reliable

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering and physical hardware integration experience.
• Proficient in Python or C# for building modular software architectures, integration frameworks, and distributed services.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, automated testing, version control, CI/CD, debugging, and production operations.
• AI-native software engineer with effective practices for providing context, decomposing problems, directing agents, reviewing their work, and validating results.
• Hands-on experience programming commercial liquid-handling platforms and integrating robotic arms or manipulators into unified automated workcells.
• Experienced in designing workflow orchestration and scheduling systems that manage shared resources, dynamic dependencies, and execution priorities.
• Skilled at leveraging APIs and SDKs to inter-act with complex laboratory software ecosystems.
• Practical rapid-prototyping design experience, including CAD, 3D printing, CNC milling, or laser cutting for custom fixtures and hardware adaptations.
• Familiar with molecular biology, biochemistry, or wet-lab workflows, enabling effective translation between scientific requirements and engineering deliverables.
• Clear communicator adept at collaborating across multidisciplinary teams spanning research scientists, software developers, and automation engineers.

Responsibilities

• Design, program, and troubleshoot high-throughput lab workflows ensuring robust assay execution on physical hardware.
• Build orchestration systems, hardware abstraction layers, and instrument drivers that manage retries, handle shared resource contention, and enable 24/7 unattended operation.
• Implement telemetry, logging, metrics, and alerting across hardware and software to diagnose failures and resolve root causes using software hooks or vision models rather than relying on manual workarounds.
• Build systems to maintain an accurate real-time digital representation of the lab, including sample tracking, instrument state, and reagent availability, with bidirectional integration into LIMS and ELNs.
• Manage hardware requirements, site constraints, communication protocols, and workcell integration from initial mechanical layout and prototyping through production deployment.
• Work directly with software engineers, automation scientists, and hardware engineers to translate complex scientific protocols into production-grade technical architectures.

Skills

Python

C#

CI/CD

Automated testing

System design

APIs/SDKs

REST

gRPC

Tools

REST

gRPC

LIMS/ELN integration

Job description

Genentech is seeking a Senior Software Engineer – Lab Automation to bridge software architecture, frontier AI models, and real-world lab hardware. You will design hardware abstraction layers, integration frameworks, and orchestration engines enabling autonomous, unattended operation of automated workcells at global scale.

You will collaborate with software, automation, and hardware engineers to translate complex scientific protocols into robust, production-grade systems and to ensure reliable