Founding Software Engineer
Job description
About the Role
This is a founding engineering role at an early-stage AI-lab automation company building software that connects AI agents to real-world laboratory systems. You will own critical infrastructure spanning experiment orchestration, agent connectivity, and distributed coordination, working at the intersection of software, robotics, and physical systems.
What You'll Do
Build experiment orchestration systems that schedule and coordinate experiments across distributed labs.
Connect AI agents to real-world instruments and experiments through robust agent infrastructure.
Design and implement data infrastructure to capture state, actions, measurements, failures, and provenance.
Architect distributed systems that reliably coordinate software, devices, and experiments at scale.
Develop developer tooling and APIs to accelerate new workflows and integrations.
Debug and optimize across the full stack, from software to hardware to physical systems.
What We're Looking For
3+ years building production-grade software systems end-to-end.
Strong proficiency in Rust or TypeScript.
Deep experience designing distributed systems with APIs, networking, and asynchronous communication patterns.
Proven ability to debug and integrate across hardware, firmware, and software layers in production.
Experience building data infrastructure systems that capture state, events, and provenance at scale.
Experience building orchestration or scheduling systems coordinating multiple concurrent processes or devices.
Experience building developer tooling, SDKs, or APIs for integration workflows.
High agency and ownership in ambiguous, early-stage environments.
Background in robotics, hardware integration, lab automation, embedded systems, or ML infrastructure is a strong plus.
No biology experience required.
Location
On-site or hybrid in Munich, Germany or San Francisco, CA. Visa sponsorship is not available.