Senior / Staff Automation Engineer, Insitro
$165-215k
+ Annual Performance Bonus Plan & Equity Incentive Plan
4+ days a week in office (South San Francisco, CA)
Machine learning drug discovery & development
Open for applications
Machine learning drug discovery & development
201-500 employees
Open for applications
$165-215k
+ Annual Performance Bonus Plan & Equity Incentive Plan
4+ days a week in office (South San Francisco, CA)
201-500 employees
Company mission
To become the first truly data-driven, integrated, drug discovery and development company.
Role
Who you are
- Bachelor's degree or higher in Robotics, Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, Software or Bioengineering, or Physics, Chemistry or Biology
- B.S, with 8+ years, M.S with 6+ years, or Ph.D. with 3+ years of professional experience working with automation hardware
- Schedulers, liquid handlers, robotics, software solutions excite you!
- You understand existing capabilities of the lab automation industry and have a track record showing technical depth in automation systems of varying scale
- You are comfortable completing work independently on complex projects and can also give guidance to others on daily work
- You have experience managing the relationship to other engineering functions (eg. third party service providers and vendors or internal mechanical or software engineering teams)
- You see problems as opportunities and are not afraid to be inquisitive in the face of unknown
- You have experience automating scientific workflows (ex. Cell Culture, Genomic Screening or DNA-encoded Library processes)
- You have experience working with Python, SQL, and/or C#
What the job involves
- As a Senior Automation Engineer, you will collaborate with scientists, software engineers, and microscopy engineers to build and develop high quality automated systems and protocols
- You will be a member of the Automation team and report to the Associate Director, Automation Development
- You will join an exciting biotech startup that has long-term stability due to significant funding, but that is still very much in formation
- You will have ample opportunities for growth and influence
- You will work with a diverse team, learn a broad range of skills, and help shape insitro's culture, strategic direction, and outcomes. Join us, and help make a difference to patients!
- Come up to speed on various scientific process to drive the translation of workflows onto automation systems
- Design, develop and qualify new workcells and liquid handling protocols to enable new platform capabilities
- Work with the Automation Industrialization team to ensure equipment is in good operating condition and troubleshoot automation or software errors
- Work with the Automation Sciences team to define scientific workflows, develop process specific QC metrics, and ensure successful transfer of methods to end users
- Collaborate with folks from our machine learning, software engineering and scientific groups to solve questions ranging from technology onboarding, minimizing batch effects, or process improvements
- Identify opportunities in how we develop, test and deploy automation solutions more efficiently
- Lead and shape our team culture with your ideas and experience
- Collaborate with the LIMS team on workflow parametrization
Our take
As pharmaceuticals become more specialised and complex, the traditional drug discovery process is becoming increasingly expensive and time consuming, taking up to 15 years from beginning to end. Insitro exists to reverse this trend by bringing a tech-first approach to the biopharma industry. By using machine learning to sort through vast amounts of medical data it is able to identify patterns in disease expression and identify targets for treatment.
This approach doesn't eliminate clinical trials but it augments the discovery process by highlighting productive areas of research. Perhaps the most difficut hurdle to overcome for Insitro is cultural: the huge pharmaceutical industry is used to relying on manual research and may have difficulty trusting machine learning guidance. However, this hasn't prevented their solution from being adopted by Gilead in their search for treatements for liver disease. It is also collaborating with Bristol Myers Squibb in ALS and dementia research. Should these partnerships prove successful Insitro stands to really shake up the pharmaceutical industry.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
28% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Mar 2021
$400m
SERIES C
May 2020
$143m
SERIES B
Total funding: $643m
Company benefits
- Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage; insitro pays 100% of premiums for employees
- Excellent mental health and well-being support
- Open vacation policy
- Access to free onsite baristas and cafe with daily lunch and breakfast
- Access to free onsite fitness center
- Commuter benefits
- Paid parental leave
- 401(k) matching
- Flexible work schedule (on site and remote)
- Monthly cell phone & internet stipend
Company HQ
The East Side, South San Francisco, CA
Articles
Leadership
Daphne Koller
(CEO)Co-founder of Engageli and Coursera. Former COO and Calico Labs. Former Professor at Stanford University with a Post Doc in Computer Science from Berkley.
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