Research Engineer - Automated Lab Development

Responsibilities

• Define the overall technical roadmap and detailed system architecture to build an autonomous, automated, end-to-end battery research lab, seamlessly integrating both commercially available instruments and custom hardware solutions
• Identify gaps where commercial automation solutions fall short. Define strategies for external partner engagement and directly lead the co-development of custom automation approaches with third-party vendors
• Own build-out of partner automation solutions within Meta labs
• Drive or directly develop application-specific customizations and extensions of automation solutions
• Guide development of software by internal and/or external partners to operate individual system components, orchestrate the full system, and provide resulting data to researchers
• Translate the needs of internal research scientists into actionable hardware and software engineering specifications for the autonomous lab system, ensuring continuous alignment with core research objectives

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Robotics, Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical discipline
• 8+ years of hands-on experience designing, scaling, and deploying automated laboratory systems, robotic workcells, or complex industrial testing/characterization hardware
• Experience setting requirements for and using software to control physical hardware, manage device state machines, sequence multi-instrument workflows
• Experience setting requirements for custom APIs, web services, or serial communication protocols to bridge data and control pathways between different vendor instruments
• Experience managing technical definitions, timelines, and deliverables with third-party automation vendors, system integrators, or external OEM partners
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams (e.g., research scientists, software engineers, hardware engineers) to translate scientific experimental requirements into engineering specifications

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's or Ph.D. in Robotics, Mechatronics, Computer Science, or a related field with a thesis or research focus on automated physical systems
• Familiarity with modern laboratory connectivity standards and middleware protocols
• Experience integrating automated hardware with Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELNs), Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), or centralized cloud data warehouses
• Experience with battery and materials characterization techniques, including electrochemical cell characterization, cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)
• Direct experience working on automated high-throughput screening (HTS) or "closed-loop" autonomous discovery systems where hardware execution loops were driven by algorithmic/ML inputs