Staff Software Engineer

Level: 5
Salary band: $190,000-$220,000
Bonus: 10% performance-based, discretionary
Location: Hybrid - work in our Cambridge, MA office up to 3x/wk

At Automata, we're on a mission to transform how scientists work by making automation accessible to every lab in the world. We believe that by giving labs the power to automate, we can unlock discoveries that will shape the future of life sciences—from diagnostics and drug discovery to synthetic biology.

But we’re more than just a company disrupting the industry—we're a team of innovators, problem-solvers, and creators passionate about empowering scientists. Our LINQ platform combines hardware and software to streamline workflows, making lab automation fast, flexible, and affordable. This means our customers can focus on groundbreaking research, while we take care of the rest.

Why Work at Automata?

• Impact: Your work will directly contribute to advancements in science and medicine, supporting labs around the globe as they push boundaries in research and innovation.
• Innovation: You’ll be part of a team solving complex problems (seriously, no one else has figured out how to do this yet), using cutting-edge technology (we have robots).
• Growth: We invest in our people. Whether through hands-on experience, professional development, or collaborative projects, you’ll grow both professionally and personally.
• Community: Join a diverse, passionate team that values collaboration (golf on a Thursday, Soccer once a month, movie nights whenever we fancy it).

We're looking for a Staff Full Stack Software Engineer to join our Boston Engineering Team whose mission is to build lab automation products at the convergence of hardware and software in the life-sciences automation space that can transform the industry thereby accelerating science.

About the team

This is the first US-based engineering team for Automata and thus you will have the ability to help set our local engineering culture. Our engineers are more than just technically skilled; they're driven by curiosity and a growth mindset. They find immense joy in seeing our software power robots and our hardware bench, transporting plates from instrument to instrument. They understand the profound impact of their work on the life sciences industry and this fuels their passion.

The core skills we’d like to see:

• Experience with back-end technologies such as Python or Go.

• Proficiency and understanding of SQL and NoSQL Databases

• Deep understanding of software architecture and services with an emphasis on APIs and rest & event-driven architectures

• Experience leading projects as a technical leader

• Experience with mentoring and growing members of their team

• Experience with Kafka, gRPC or Protobuf for event definitions

• Experience with owning technical standards and best practices

We are flexible but what matters most for us is your ability to be a problem solver. We are operating at the edge of robotics and science, so we need teammates who are comfortable with ambiguity and rapid innovation.

You are not expected to know everything, but here are some other of our core technologies and what our environment looks like:

• Proficiency in front-end frameworks (React)

• Knowledge of cloud services and deployment