Lab Automation Scientist

Responsibilities

• Maintain safety as the top priority in all laboratory and automation work, including proper identification and handling of materials that pose potential risks to health, safety, or the environment.
• Maintain detailed, timely, and compliant documentation of platform configurations, experimental procedures, maintenance activities, and outcomes.
• Own the reliability and day-to-day operation of the HTE platform, ensuring high uptime and consistent data quality across all supported workflows.
• Develop, optimize, and validate automation methods and reaction workflows; maintain SOPs, maintenance logs, and method libraries in accordance with internal standards.
• Drive root cause analysis and troubleshooting of automation issues; perform hands-on repairs and adjustments for routine hardware and software problems, and coordinate with vendors for corrective and preventive maintenance when required.
• Collaborate with the Scale4Insight team across sites to share methods, adopt proven solutions, and contribute to a unified automation strategy.
• Partner with synthetic and analytical chemists to understand their research needs, translate scientific requirements into automation workflows, and help them extract maximum value from the platform.
• Support the design and execution of high-throughput experimentation campaigns, ensuring data quality and reproducibility standards are met.
• Identify and map opportunities for automation beyond the HTE platform, including systems serving synthetic chemistry and analytical sciences at the Louisville site; develop and present proposals for new capabilities aligned with scientific priorities.
• Contribute to the definition of data generation standards that enable effective data analysis and the training of predictive models and AI tools.
• Act as the primary point of contact for HTE platform users at the Louisville site, supporting onboarding, adoption, and day-to-day platform questions.
• Train end users on platform operation, best practices, and data interpretation.
• Ensure effective integration of platform outputs with scheduling software, LIMS, ELN, and downstream data pipelines, including connections to data management and AI/ML tools.
• Champion the adoption of AI/ML tools and digital workflows within the platform environment, identifying opportunities to enhance automation capabilities, improve data quality, and accelerate scientific decision-making.
• Develop scripts or configuration tools (e.g., Python, C#) to extend platform capabilities and enable new workflow possibilities.
• Maintain accurate technical documentation for all supported systems, methods, and integrations.

Qualifications

• B.S. or M.S. in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Biochemistry, or a closely related discipline.
• A strong scientific understanding of the workflows being automated is essential, whether that comes from a science or an engineering background.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience in laboratory automation in a pharmaceutical, biotech, or chemistry research environment.
• Demonstrated ability to program and troubleshoot automated workflows on liquid handling or integrated robotic platforms.