USD per year
Software Engineer, Lab Automation
Location
Lausanne
Employment Type
Full time
Location Type
On-site
Department
Automation Adaptyv is building an automated lab that lets AI agents run biology experiments. We're entering the era of agentic science where AI models can now design novel proteins, propose hypotheses, and iterate on experimental results. But they can't run the experiments themselves - that's still a manual, months-long process. We're building the infrastructure that gives AI agents access to the physical world. We are one of the fastest growing biotech companies, trusted by leading biopharmas, frontier AI labs, and the techbio companies pushing the field forward. This is a rare chance to help advance some of the most important work happening in biotech today. Our automated lab is powered by a deep software + hardware stack: lab instruments worth millions of USD reverse-engineered into API-controllable hardware, dozens of devices orchestrated through complex workflows, full observability on everything that happens in the lab, processing pipelines for messy physical-world data, and AI systems that troubleshoot production results and accelerate assay development. We’re growing rapidly and are hiring for talented people to scale and support the massive demand for AI-driven wet lab experimentation.
About the Role
You'll build work-cell orchestration, instrument drivers, protocol scheduling, error-recovery logic, and monitoring. Physical systems fail in ways pure software doesn't — a plate gets stuck, a liquid handler skips a well, a temperature controller drifts. Your job is to make the system handle all of it gracefully. This is a broad, hands-on role for a strong engineer who wants their code to drive real machines and see it run the same day.
What You'll Do
- Build orchestration software that coordinates liquid handlers, plate readers,... incubators,... robot arms — handling timing dependencies,... state,... error recovery.
- Reverse-engineer and develop instrument drivers and APIs.... Each instrument speaks different protocol (serial,... USB,... TCP/IP); you work out how it talks and build clean abstraction over it.
- Model and execute complex multi-step protocols reliably — single run can span dozens steps across multiple instruments.
- Build error-recovery logic so when something fails mid-run,... system retries,... skips,... alerts,... or pauses depending failure mode.
- Create monitoring and observability for work-cell health: instrument status,... run progress,... error rates.
- Debug across software–hardware boundary — figuring out whether bad data comms,... firmware,... calibration,... or code problem.
- Work closely with lab automation engineers,... rest software team,... scientists running production.
Stack
TypeScript and Python,... Postgres (Supabase), Modal for compute.... We control instruments with open-source Python tooling like PyLabRobot and PyHamilton wherever we can,... rather than proprietary vendor GUIs.
What We're Looking For
- Strong software engineering skills. You write production code in Python and/or TypeScript — well-structured... maintainable...
- Comfortable at hardware-software boundary.... You've built software drives physical devices or excited to.... You can read protocol spec... debug flaky connection... reason timing.
- Lab automation experience strong plus.... Familiarity PyHamilton,... PyLabRobot,... Opentrons or similar tooling helps — background robotics,... industrial automation,... IoT,... embedded systems.
- Maker hacker attitude.... You like figuring how closed systems work... building thing makes them work better.... Bonus if comfortable electronics,... microcontrollers... 3D printer when integration needs physical fix.
- AI-native builder.... It's 2026 — you build coding agents like Claude Code default... sharp judgment what they produce.
- Self-starter independent.... You define what needs building from how lab actually works... not just what's ticket.
- Reliability-minded.... Lab runs 24/7; you design systems where one instrument failing doesn't cascade whole work cell.
Biology background not required — but you should be excited code runs real experiments.
Details
- Location: Lausanne Switzerland (on-site — need hands-on access physical instruments).
- Type: Full time
- Start date: ASAP
Application deadline We reviewing applicants rolling basis.
Adaptyv builds technologies that allow protein engineers to design and test new proteins to develop new medicines, better enzymes for research and industrial applications, or functional materials with novel properties.
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