Senior Automation Engineer (AI)

Location: Somerville, MA, United States

Base salary: $140,000–$180,000 per year, plus annual bonus, equity compensation, and benefits.

Company

hirify.global is a clinical-stage generative biology company using AI, machine learning, and large-scale experimentation to design proteins for drug development.

What you will do

• Design, build, and integrate custom instruments, in-house hardware, fluidic systems, and related capabilities into scientist-facing wet-lab workflows.
• Own automation and instrumentation problems end to end, including method design, system improvement, troubleshooting, vendor coordination, documentation, and knowledge transfer.
• Drive reliability, troubleshooting, and method development for DNA and protein production, cell culture, screening, validation, and assay-readout workflows on integrated workcells.
• Improve throughput, parallelization, data quality, production, scale-up, and future platform workflows.
• Partner with scientists and stakeholders to provide in-lab support, unblock experiments, and identify engineering-enabled capabilities.
• Prioritize automation projects and manage automation engineers across day-to-day activities and long-term projects, including guidance and resourcing.

Requirements

• BS or higher with 7+ years of industry experience in lab automation and analytical or process instrumentation development; or MS with 5+ years of industry experience; or a PhD in engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, life sciences, or a related field.
• Proven leadership experience in a wet lab and engineering team through project management and direct reports.
• Strong experience with liquid handlers and integrated workcells, such as Biomek, Tecan, Lynx, Hamilton, Opentrons, HighRes, Retisoft, or similar systems.
• Experience owning workflows from method design and execution through debugging, documentation, and operational support.
• Experience developing or deploying wet-lab-facing agentic applications, including closed-loop experimental systems.
• Experience building, integrating, or supporting custom instrumentation, fluidic systems, or microfluidic devices in an R&D environment.
• Strong communication and proactive collaboration skills across scientists, engineers, lab operations, and other technical and scientific stakeholders.
• Ability and interest to hand off workflows to scientists through training and documentation to improve adoption, autonomy, and effective use of automation tools.

Nice to have

• Experience supporting DNA production, protein production, protein purification, cell culture, functional and binding assays, or related molecular biology workflows at scale.
• Significant experience with HighRes, Retisoft, or other advanced scheduling and orchestration systems and integrated hardware environments.
• Experience supporting platform transfer, vendor coordination, user training, or expansion of methods across multiple instruments and lab locations.
• Experience in a highly collaborative, matrixed research environment integrating automation, platform engineering, and discovery teams.

Culture & Benefits

• Fast-paced, dynamic research environment focused on iterative, pragmatic, builder-oriented problem solving.
• Hands-on collaboration across biology, engineering, software, instrumentation, and discovery.
• Opportunity to coach automation engineers, support their growth, and build meaningful careers.
• Annual bonus, equity compensation, and competitive benefits package.
• hirify.global is committed to equal employment opportunity.

Hiring process

• Applications must be submitted directly by candidates; unsolicited resumes from recruitment or staffing agencies are not accepted unless the agency is contacted directly by hirify.global' internal Talent Acquisition team.