Ginkgo Bioworks (platform) · Boston
Software Engineering
Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.
Job Title: Automation Engineer 2, Support Applications Engineering
The Automation BU is growing with a new mandate of external sales and support. A primary differentiator of our offering is Managed Automation Services (MAS), which involves our SAE team actively monitoring deployed RAC systems and remotely recovering within a short Service Level Agreement (SLA). All members of this team must be highly trained with lab automation instrumentation in addition to being the global experts on our own scheduling and control software and our integration hardware. The members of this team are monitoring all deployed RAC systems and rapidly responding to errors, in addition to working on continuous improvement projects across the RAC tech stack.
As a member of the Automation Support Applications Engineering team, you are at the intersection of technology development, deployment to the customer site and continual support of the deployed technology. Your goal is to understand and translate the needs of the customer and to work alongside Automation Scientists, Software Engineers, and Mechatronics Engineers to turn a scoped integrated automation system into a real, production-ready system. Additionally, your goal is to ensure the customer maintains system uptime and operational throughput. This role requires strong attention to detail, collaborative communication and project management skills to excel.
This is a unique role within the Support Apps Engineering Team in that it will be the first member of an overnight shift and will require you to be onsite, alone for several hours. The person who fills this position will need to be self-motivated, work independently, and yet still be part of a team. You will be the primary owner of our Autonomous Lab for the hours you work, including troubleshooting errors, performing instrument maintenance, and addressing user tickets.
To learn more about automation engineering at Ginkgo, take a look at our website: Ginkgo Automation
Responsibilities:
Perform and periodically audit the recurring PM program, ensuring tasks, frequencies, and parts lists meet reliability goals; train and certify customer operators and technicians on execution
Minimum Requirements:
On-site presence required 5 days/week (Boston, MA), strong communication skills, with the ability to clearly explain technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. This position will follow a graveyard shift schedule (10PM-6AM, five days per week).
Preferred Capabilities and Experience:
We do not expect that any one candidate will have all of the following capabilities - each is independently a preferred or “nice-to-have” capability.
The base salary range for this role is $85,600.00-$120,200.00. Actual pay within this range will depend on a candidate's skills, expertise, and experience. We also offer company stock awards, a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental & vision coverage, health spending accounts, voluntary benefits, leave of absence policies, 401(k) program with employer contribution, 8 paid holidays in addition to a full-week winter shutdown and unlimited Paid Time Off policy.
Ginkgo has implemented a return to office policy effective October 1, 2025 with required in-office days 3x per week on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Some teams may require to be onsite 4-5 days per week and this will be discussed as part of the interview process. This policy applies to all employees who live within 50 miles of Ginkgo’s offices in Boston, MA, Emeryville, CA and West Sacramento, CA.