Description
What if you could join a rapidly growing company and play a critical role in bringing new medicines to patients by helping scale the programmable infrastructure behind a new human cellular biology platform?
Vesalius Therapeutics is pioneering a new platform to generate breakthrough treatments for common diseases. Our platform combines large-scale human genetics, genomics, stem cell studies, high-dimensional cellular phenotyping, and artificial intelligence to uncover causal biology and identify optimal intervention points for new therapies.
Role Overview
As a Senior Automation Engineer, you will implement and scale the infrastructure behind our human cellular biology platform. You will work closely with cross-functional teams to design, develop, and deploy software solutions that enable scientists to efficiently conduct experiments and analyze data.
Key Responsibilities
- Implement Benchling as a data platform, including entity schemas, Postgres warehouse, Insights, API, and supporting integrations.
- Establish sample tracking end-to-end, including chain of custody from donor material to instrument output.
- Deliver analysis-ready data to the data team, including structured metadata capture, stable identifiers, and documented schemas.
- Identify gaps in commercial software and design, ship, and operate REST APIs and internal web applications.
- Build integrations between automation platforms, instruments, LIMS/ELN, imaging systems, databases, and downstream data pipelines.
- Develop tools for scientists to use independently, such as search interfaces, pull lists, and capacity dashboards.
- Investigate and resolve discrepancies, and build checks to catch issues earlier.
- Apply sound software engineering practices, including version control, testing, debugging, and modular design.
- Partner across scientific, automation, IT, and data teams to bridge experimental work and recording systems.
- Anticipate future data and integration needs, plan for them, and stay flexible to learn new systems as the platform evolves.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, engineering, bioengineering, biomedical engineering, computational biology, or a related field.
- 4+ years of experience building software, tooling, or data infrastructure in a laboratory or R&D setting.
- Strong Python and SQL skills, including joins, aggregates, CTEs, and window functions.
- Deep hands-on experience with a LIMS or ELN and its API, preferably Benchling.
- Experience shipping and operating web applications, including REST APIs, front-ends, authentication, deployment, and maintenance.
- Experience with laboratory data flow, including sample registration, experiment execution, instrument output capture, and result attachment.
- Comfort with owning a domain independently, alongside strong scientific and hardware support.
- Strong communication and documentation skills, and ability to work effectively across teams.
Preferred Experience
- Experience with Benchling, including entity schemas, warehouse, Insights, developer platform, webhooks, or apps.
- Parsing instrument output into structured results tied to samples.
- Cloud infrastructure, event-driven integrations, or data pipelines supporting automated laboratory environments.
- Working with automated liquid handlers, integrated workcells, or laboratory scheduling software.
- Mammalian cell culture at the bench, especially iPSC systems, and aseptic technique.
- Prior experience in an automation-heavy laboratory environment.
- Troubleshooting across software, hardware, instrument communication, data, and sample-tracking workflows.
- Mentoring or growing a small team.
- Experience in a regulated or GxP-adjacent environment, or writing validation and verification documentation.