Automation Engineer 2, Automation Support Applications

Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms. 

Come join Ginkgo Automation, where cutting-edge technology meets scientific expertise. Our platform, built on eight years of internal development, offers advanced hardware solutions called Reconfigurable Automation Carts (RACs) powered by our subscription-based Catalyst products: Automation Control Software (ACS) and Flow (Managed Automation Services). With a deep understanding of the challenges faced by scientists and engineers, our team has created a modular automation platform that aims to revolutionize the way science is done. We are an externally facing team, selling our technology to customers and supporting it at their sites.

Job Title: Automation Engineer 2, Support Applications Engineering

The Automation BU is growing with a new mandate of external sales and support. A primary differentiator of our offering is Catalyst Flow, which involves our SAE team actively monitoring deployed RAC systems and remotely recovering within a short Service Level Agreement (SLA). All members of this team must be highly trained with lab automation instrumentation in addition to being the global experts on our own scheduling and control software and our integration hardware. The members of this team are monitoring all deployed RAC systems and rapidly responding to errors, in addition to working on continuous improvement projects across the RAC tech.  

As a member of the Automation Support Applications Engineering team, you are at the intersection of the deployment to the customer site and the continual support of the deployed technology. Your goal is to understand and translate the needs of the customer and to work alongside Automation Scientists, Software Engineers, and Mechatronics Engineers to turn a scoped integrated automation system into a real, production-ready system. Additionally, your goal is to ensure the customer maintains system uptime and operational throughput. This role requires strong attention to detail, collaborative communication and project management skills to excel. 

To learn more about automation engineering at Ginkgo, take a look at our website: Ginkgo Automation

Responsibilities

• Assist in large projects, or lead small projects, to improve internal deployment processes, including supporting the setup of RACs, Tiles, and the necessary software, hardware, and automation for Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT)
• Support Site Acceptance Testing (SAT) at customer sites alongside team members by documenting errors, assisting in troubleshooting, and escalating issues to senior engineers as needed.
• Interact with Ginkgo’s Automation Control Software, instrument hardware and software, and gain an understanding of the biological processes being executed on the deployed RAC systems. Work with other team members to focus on optimizing the workflows and integration to improve overall efficiency and reliability.
• Act as the intersection between software and hardware teams. Communicate and collaborate with software engineers and hardware developers to ensure seamless integration and functionality of new and existing systems. 
• Troubleshoot and resolve small to medium issues that arise at the interface of software and hardware under guidance, ensuring smooth system operation. 
• Identify and resolve errors related to individual instruments or system integration through coordinating with customers during remote recovery.
• Learn and contribute to efforts aimed at minimizing instrument-related downtime and improving system reliability.
• Participate in root cause analysis of errors, and assist in implementing small-scale continuous improvement initiatives.
• Learn and assist the team in recurring preventative maintenance of instruments at customer sites.
• Contribute to SOPs and other documentation (troubleshooting guides, work instructions, operation manuals, etc.) to ensure alignment with current process steps.

Minimum Requirements

• Minimum 2 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Natural Sciences, or a related technical field (or equivalent work experience).
• On-site presence required 2-3 days/week (Emeryville, CA), strong communication skills, with the ability to clearly explain technical concepts to both technical and no