Senior Automation Engineer - High Throughput Experimentation

About Satomic

Satomic's mission is to close the gap from idea to molecule with faster navigation of chemical space. We are building a robotic chemistry platform that integrates laboratory robotics, software, and AI to transform small-molecule synthesis and drug discovery. Satomic has raised a $15M Seed from investors including Riot Ventures, HOF Capital, and Compound VC. Our team includes alumni from leading large pharmas, small biotechs, and AI labs.

About the Role

You will build the automation and data tooling our synthetic chemists use to develop and validate reactions, and you will own process quality in our data generation pipeline.

• On the build side, take an experimental design and turn it into something the automation can run: plate maps, worklists, and instrument parameters, generated rather than assembled by hand.
• On the quality side, establish controls and acceptance criteria to ensure execution consistency plate-to-plate and month-to-month, and design experiments to identify quality issues.

This role is critical to Satomic's mission by ensuring every experiment is well-designed to answer its core question efficiently.

Responsibilities

You will own:

• The automation tooling synthetic chemists use, refining it based on their feedback to close the gap between desired experiments and executable instrument runs.
• The handoff from the synthetic chemistry team to data generation, setting standards for plate design, controls, replication, and validation.
• Process QC in the data generation pipeline, including controls, replication, and plate acceptance criteria to catch issues early.
• Execution quality for running campaigns, ensuring consistency across operators, decks, and time, and addressing partial run failures.
• Identifying and fixing process quality losses through targeted experiments to separate real results from artifacts and reduce bias.
• Engineering new capabilities in the reaction process to unlock previously infeasible experiments and improve data reproducibility.

Expected Outcomes

• By day 30:
  • Map reaction development workflows and identify friction points (manual steps, rework, information loss).
  • Ship one method or tool used by chemists in real work to learn actual friction points.
  • Establish a baseline metric for data quality and reproducibility on current campaigns.
• By 90 days:
  • Create a workflow where every step of reaction development is supported by reliable automation.
  • Identify and implement three process quality improvements in the data generation pipeline.
  • Take two reactions from development through to end-to-end data generation campaigns meeting your standards.
• By year 1:
  • Establish a repeatable pipeline for onboarding reactions and scaling them, with clear handoffs between teams.
  • Make parameterization and design tools the default choice for chemists, encoding judgment into agent-executable processes.
  • Reduce campaign-level noise or material waste on a named metric to improve information yield per well.
• By year 5:
  • Embed screening discipline into the company’s culture, carried by chemists and data-generation scientists who teach it onward.
  • Encode design judgment into agents that critique and correct campaign designs autonomously.
  • Make hard reactions scalable by solving development problems and engineering reproducible solutions.

Role Characteristics

This role is:

• Fast-moving, requiring proactive planning and real-time adaptation to experimental data.
• A hybrid scientist-engineer role, demanding statistical rigor, benchwork, and instrument expertise.
• For someone who cannot tolerate broken processes and is expected to address issues beyond their immediate scope.
• Embedded in Automation but primarily collaborating with synthetic chemists and data scientists.
• Focused on teaching and influence to raise standards across teams.

This role is not:

• A purely technical build role; accountability extends to data trustworthiness, not just functionality.
• Limited to guiding other automation engineers; influence spans chemists and colleagues unfamiliar with high-throughput settings.
• A role with a predefined playbook; requires opinionated, quick learning and driving change.

Qualifications

• Hands-on high-throughput experimentation experience, including scaling processes and setting process checks/acceptance criteria.
• Fluency in design of experiments (DOE): factorial/fractional designs, blocking, randomization, replication, power analysis, and variance decomposition.
• Proven ability to diagnose and solve problems in physical processes, not just propose plausible explanations.
• Teaching experience: bringing colleagues up to your standard and codifying intuition into scalable SOPs or agents.
• Scripting skills to automate data tasks (e.g., reformatting instrument exports, cleaning spreadsheets, integrating systems).
• AI literacy and experience using AI tools to extend your work, including interest in encoding judgment into agent-executable processes.
• Proficiency in Python and data skills to independently analyze campaign data.
• Scientific background sufficient to quickly understand synthetic chemistry and collaborate as a peer with chemists.

Interview Process

• Phone screen (15 minutes): Brief introductory call to discuss the role.
• Technical screen (30 minutes): Discussion with a technical colleague on experimental design and screening experience.
• Take-home assignment (4-6 hours): Scoped experimental design problem representative of Satomic’s work.
• Final round (75 minutes):
  • Presentation of a screening or design campaign you’ve owned.
  • Case discussion and conversations with leadership on collaboration, teaching, and cross-disciplinary work.

Pay

This role offers a base salary of $120,000–$140,000, meaningful equity ownership, and competitive benefits. Offers are designed to balance cash compensation and long-term ownership, with final salaries based on experience and expected impact. Exceptionally aligned candidates may receive offers toward the top of this range or beyond.

Diversity & Inclusion

Satomic is committed to building a diverse team and inclusive culture. We value humility, ingenuity, and diverse perspectives to strengthen our work and advance our mission responsibly. Our platform’s impact—accelerating life-changing medicines and technologies—requires thoughtful, diverse voices to ensure it is used for good.