Software Engineer 2, Autonomous Lab

Role Overview

The Software Engineer 2 role at Ginkgo Bioworks involves building and enhancing the Catalyst software platform that drives the company's automated laboratory systems in Boston, Massachusetts. This position is well-suited for technical professionals who want to apply software development skills to advance biological engineering and automation.

Key Responsibilities

Software engineers across the Catalyst organization undertake various technical delivery, collaboration, quality, and growth tasks. Professionals scope and deliver well-defined features end-to-end, write clean and maintainable code following established architectural patterns, and communicate dependencies proactively. Team members participate in technical design discussions, conduct code reviews, collaborate with cross-functional partners like scientists and operators, and document decisions clearly. Quality responsibilities include writing unit and integration tests, handling edge cases, addressing bugs promptly, and building robust logging and observability into shipped software. Personnel also focus on continuous learning, developing domain expertise, and seeking peer feedback.

Requirements

Candidates must hold a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Bioinformatics, or a related technical field, or possess equivalent practical experience. Applicants need some professional software development experience, which can include internships, academic research, or full-time employment on team-owned production codebases. Essential qualifications include proficiency in Python, the ability to reason about code across multiple files, familiarity with Git version control, and strong communication skills. This position requires working on-site Monday through Friday in the Boston office, and applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis without visa sponsorship.

Nice to Have

Preferred capabilities include familiarity with laboratory automation, robotics, or scientific instrumentation. Exposure to agentic systems, LLM-backed applications, tool-use frameworks such as LangChain, scheduling concepts, and hardware communication protocols is advantageous. Additional beneficial experience covers relational databases like PostgreSQL, Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure on GCP, AWS, or Azure, REST API design, TypeScript, React, and agile methodologies.

Skills and Tools

Salary and Benefits

The annual salary range for this role is 85,600 USD to 120,200 USD, with actual pay depending on skills, expertise, and experience. Ginkgo Bioworks offers company stock awards and a comprehensive benefits package featuring medical, dental, and vision coverage, health spending accounts, voluntary benefits, and leave of absence policies. Additional perks include a 401(k) program with employer contributions, 8 paid holidays, a full-week winter shutdown, and an unlimited Paid Time Off policy. Relocation assistance is available for candidates needing to relocate for the on-site requirement.

About the Company

Ginkgo Bioworks focuses on making biology easier to engineer by constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world to address global challenges in health, energy, food, and materials. The organization utilizes an in-house automated foundry to design and build new organisms.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should visit the official company careers page at ginkgobioworks.com to submit an application and review the privacy notices.