Senior Software Engineer, Ginkgo Bioworks

• The ideal candidate possesses a strong background in programming reliable physical real-time systems in production environments
• They must also excel at cross-functional collaboration, ensuring our drivers meet the exacting standards of the scientific community and providing rapid response to critical customer issues
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• 5 years of experience in a software development role, with a focus on hardware integration, embedded systems, or driver development
• Extensive experience with Python
• Strong communication and collaboration skills
• Familiarity with laboratory automation, robotics, or scientific instrumentation is highly beneficial

Desirable

• We are seeking a highly motivated and skilled Senior Software Engineer to join our core engineering team to work on Catalyst, our software stack that runs our robotic lab systems
• This is a critical, high-impact role responsible for the design, development, full integration testing, and field support of software drivers for our cutting-edge autonomous labs
• Design, implement, and maintain robust, high-performance software drivers using Python and/or C#/.NET for a diverse range of lab automation hardware (e.g., robotic arms, liquid handlers, plate readers)
• Deeply understand and implement various low-level hardware communication protocols, including RS-232, USB, and TCP/IP
• Develop drivers with a focus on reliability
• Contribute to the design of the device abstraction layer to create intuitive and robust interfaces for high-level application developers
• Use and enable agentic software
• Extensive testing with the rest of the Catalyst stack
• Collaborate closely with scientists and quality assurance teams to perform joint functional testing and validate driver performance against scientific requirements
• Develop and maintain sophisticated automated unit and integration tests
• Design and build hardware simulation environments to enable comprehensive driver testing and rapid iteration without relying on physical instrument access
• Ensure the drivers include comprehensive error handling, logging, and fault-tolerance mechanisms to guarantee graceful recovery from communication timeouts and hardware failures
• Act as a Tier 2 technical resource, providing rapid diagnosis and resolution to software and communication errors occurring at critical customer laboratory sites
• Utilize remote diagnostic tools, system logs, and protocol analyzers to troubleshoot complex field issues quickly and effectively
• Develop and document workarounds and permanent solutions to maintain high customer uptime
• Proactively observing usage of our drivers and proposing improvements to the user experience/reliability