Automation Engineer 1, Automation Support Applications

Responsibilities

• Act as the primary owner of the Autonomous Lab during evening hours, including error recovery, instrument maintenance, and addressing user tickets.
• Execute remote recovery efforts with customers to diagnose root causes and execute corrective actions for instrument or integration failures.
• Lead root-cause investigations for complex software-hardware integration failures to improve reliability.
• Develop and validate automation scripts and configuration templates to standardize installations.
• Create and refine end-to-end deployment playbooks, including factory and site acceptance testing (FAT/SAT).
• Author and maintain SOPs, troubleshooting guides, and training materials.
• Perform and audit recurring preventative maintenance (PM) programs to ensure reliability goals are met.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Life Sciences, or a related technical field.
• 1-3 years of relevant experience in laboratory automation, systems integration, or related technical work.
• Ability to work a swing shift schedule (2 PM – 10 PM, five days per week) onsite in Boston, MA.
• Ability to lift, push, or pull up to 25lbs and stand or walk for long periods.
• Ability to travel to customer sites occasionally (less than 10% of the time).
• Strong proactive problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently with minimal supervision.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a customer-facing role governed by Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
• Experience operating, troubleshooting, or maintaining complex laboratory automation equipment.
• Background in the Life Science industry, ideally within a lab or research setting.
• Experience with workflow/process scheduling software or managing multi-device integrated systems.

About the Company

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