Software Engineer (Lab Automation)

Location: Lausanne, Switzerland; on-site with hands-on access to physical instruments

Company

hirify.global is building an automated laboratory that enables AI agents to run biology experiments through integrated software, hardware, data pipelines, and AI systems.

What you will do

• Build orchestration software for liquid handlers, plate readers, incubators, and robot arms, including timing dependencies, state management, and error recovery.
• Reverse-engineer instruments and develop drivers and APIs for serial, USB, and TCP/IP protocols.
• Model and execute complex multi-step laboratory protocols across multiple instruments.
• Implement retries, skips, alerts, and pauses for different mid-run failure modes.
• Create monitoring and observability for instrument status, run progress, error rates, and work-cell health.
• Debug issues across communications, firmware, calibration, software, and physical hardware in collaboration with lab automation engineers, software engineers, and production scientists.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering skills and production experience with Python and/or TypeScript; code must be well-structured and maintainable.
• Comfort working at the hardware–software boundary, including reading protocol specifications, debugging unreliable connections, and reasoning about timing.
• Ability to work independently, define what needs to be built from how the laboratory operates, and work beyond a fixed ticket scope.
• Reliability-minded approach to designing systems where one instrument failure does not cascade through the work cell.
• Ability and willingness to work on-site in Lausanne, Switzerland with hands-on access to physical instruments.
• Biology experience is not required.

Nice to have

• Experience with lab automation tooling such as PyHamilton, PyLabRobot, Opentrons, or similar systems.
• Background in robotics, industrial automation, IoT, or embedded systems.
• Experience with electronics, microcontrollers, or 3D printers.
• Maker or hacker experience with understanding and improving closed systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time, on-site position in Lausanne, Switzerland.
• Start date: ASAP.
• Work on an automated laboratory running 24/7 and supporting AI-driven wet-lab experimentation.
• Use TypeScript, Python, Postgres with Supabase, Modal, and open-source instrument tooling instead of proprietary vendor GUIs.
• Build software that drives physical machines and can be tested in the laboratory the same day.

Hiring process

• Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.