Automation Engineer

We are looking for an Automation Engineer to help us scale the world’s highest-throughput protein profiling platform. 

About us

nplex was founded with the purpose of making biology easier to understand. To do this, we are untangling some of the most difficult problems in protein profiling and measurement.

Our team is combining DNA nanotechnology, high-dimensional flow cytometry, laboratory automation, and machine learning to develop the world’s highest throughput proteomic platform: the nELISA. Today, every nELISA ‘unit cell’ is zipping at 300,000 proteins per day. We’re aiming to scale to 1M proteins per instrument.day in the next year. In short, we are trying to do for proteomics what Illumina did for DNA sequencing. 

We are building a diverse team of engineers, scientists, and world-changers. We like to break down difficult problems using a first principles approach, leveraging the latest breakthroughs from across the scientific and technological spectrum to drive our mission forward. 

About the Role

Core to nplex’s approach is to engineer smarter and massively scalable assays. Automation is how we reach the scale needed to serve the world’s needs of protein profiling. Automation is integral to our vision of the future. Every aspect of our wet lab operation has been built with automation in mind - from reagent storage and nELISA fabrication, all the way to fully automated high-throughput screening (HTS) with the nELISA. We are at the early stages of our automation roadmap, and we’re aiming to build with the entire world’s immunoassay capacity in mind.

We’re looking for talented engineers who are excited about the automation and scale up of life science tools and wet lab processes. As an Automation Engineer, you will take part of an on-going 10x scale up in screening throughput over the next year. You will be part of the team architecting V2 of our production workflow which will yield as much as 100x increase in production throughput going forward. Under the guidance of our Head of Automation, you will get to work hand in hand with our team of nano-engineers and software developers to develop the wetware, hardware, and software infrastructure needed to support our automation needs going forward as we bring the nELISA to its full potential. 

If you join you will get to:

● Architect and design automation workflows, and successively optimize these workflows using high-end liquid-handling equipment, magnetic and robotic tools, and high throughput flow cytometers.

● Design large scale assay optimization campaigns, employing DoE and other approaches, to efficiently explore probe parameter space and optimize bioassays.

● Write software to drive operation of lab equipment and robotics.

● Employ biochemistry and molecular methods such as: spectroscopy, protein purification, antibody conjugation, DNA modification, and fluorescent labelling. You would get to fabricate and process nanomaterials, construct assay reagents, and test functional aspects of the nELISA system in suitable R&D tests.

●  Communicate analytical results to support decision-making, and collaborate with the R&D and Data teams to support company-wide goals and project timelines.

● Train, and work with other Engineers to maintain efficient laboratory workflows.

● Establish, monitor and maintain a stable and productive automated environment through QC, preventative maintenance and budgeting of necessary time and other resources. Assist in the development of SOP’s, maintenance manuals, start-up procedures, etc. and provide training to new users of both the production workcell and the automation development workcell.

● Play a key role in building a next-generation proteomics technology from the ground up!

We’re looking for someone who has:

● An BS or MS in Engineering with significant experience in the Life Sciences industry, preferably at a growing startup.

● > 5 years of experience implementing and using automated systems in the life sciences industry.

● Experience programming automated liquid handling systems (e.g. Beckman Coulter FX/NX, Tecan Fluent/EVO, Agilent Bravo, Hamilton Nimbus/STAR/Vantage), or else significant software development capability, especially pertaining to hardware control.

● Practical knowledge of high-throughput biological processes.

● Excellent communication skills (written, verbal, and in a codebase) and an independent problem solver.

● Experience in interacting with Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS).

Nice to haves:

● Experience designing and building integrated automation infrastructure; eg. workcells for executing high-throughput processes, as well as flexible software/tooling that supports distributed lab automation teams.

● Experience with cloud services, mySQL databases, or similar.

● Knowledge of surface chemistry and immunoassays.

Please apply if you:

● Connect deeply with our mission, ambition and sense of duty to help scientists measure and understand biology. We developed our technology to better measure biology and discover biomarkers for early detection of diseases. This is not marketing flash: we firmly believe that, if we are successful, we could eradicate diseases by enabling them to be diagnosed earlier. We also believe that our hard work to bring this technology to fruition is our duty not only as scientists and engineers, but also as children and parents.

● You are up for a challenge and want to grow: we are a team of problem-solvers, and we continually put ourselves to the test and march into the unknown. We have a growth mindset, and we rely on each other to give critical and candid feedback to ensure that we can reach our full potential.

● Love cutting-edge biotechnology. The nELISA is a next-gen tool that leverages DNA nanotechnology to generate proteomic data more efficiently than ever before. You get to design and build the system that will run the technology going forward.

● Like to work in a cross-functional team. You would get to interface with scientists and engineers on the bioware, hardware and software fronts.