What if you could join a rapidly growing company and play a critical role in bringing new medicines to patients by helping scale the programmable infrastructure behind a new human cellular biology platform?

About Vesalius

Vesalius Therapeutics is pioneering a new platform to generate breakthrough treatments for common diseases. Our platform combines large-scale human genetics, genomics, stem cell studies, high-dimensional cellular phenotyping, and artificial intelligence to uncover causal biology and identify optimal intervention points for new therapies. Vesalius was founded in 2019 by Flagship Pioneering.

Role Overview

Vesalius is seeking a highly motivated Automation Engineer to help scale our automated biology platform. This early-career role sits at the intersection of biology, robotics, software, and data systems, with a focus on programming, data handling, systems integration, and workflow automation.

You will partner with scientists, automation operators, IT, and data science teams to translate biological workflows into robust automated workcells and ensure experiments generate reliable, traceable, analysis-ready data. This role goes beyond operating instruments—it is focused on making automation programmable, integrated, scalable, and reliable.

Key Responsibilities

Implement Benchling as a data platform, not only as an ELN: entity schemas, the Postgres warehouse, Insights, the API, and the supporting integrations.
Establish sample tracking end to end. Chain of custody from donor material through line, vial, thaw, run and instrument output, and the links that let a result be attached back to the sample that produced it.
Deliver analysis-ready data to the data team, including structured metadata capture, stable identifiers, and documented schemas with reliable handoff.
Identify gaps in commercial software and design, ship and operate REST APIs and internal web applications, for example a results parser, a scheduling interface, or an app to integrate Benchling.
Build integrations between automation platforms, instruments, LIMS/ELN, imaging systems, databases and downstream data pipelines.
Build tools scientists use independently: search interfaces, pull lists, capacity dashboards.
Investigate and resolve discrepancies, such as inventory that does not reconcile after a migration, and build the checks that catch them earlier.
Apply sound software engineering practice: version control, testing, debugging, modular design, and documentation that someone else can maintain.
Partner across scientific, automation, IT and data teams, bridging experimental work and the systems that record it.
Anticipate future data and integration needs, plan for them, and stay flexible about learning new systems as the platform evolves.

Qualifications

Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, engineering, bioengineering, biomedical engineering, computational biology or a related field, or a life science degree with a demonstrated programming record.
4+ years building software, tooling or data infrastructure in a laboratory or R&D setting, including time as the person accountable for a system other people depended on daily.
Strong Python and SQL: joins, aggregates, CTEs and window functions.
Deep hands-on experience with a LIMS or ELN and its API. Benchling strongly preferred; Sapio, Dotmatics, LabVantage or similar all count.
Experience shipping and operating a web application: a REST API, a front-end for other users, including authentication, deployment and maintenance.
Experience with how data moves through a laboratory: how a sample is registered, how it becomes an experiment, how instrument output is captured, and how a result is attached back to the sample.
Comfort with owning a domain independently, alongside strong scientific and hardware support.
Strong communication and documentation skills, and the ability to work effectively across scientific, automation, IT and data teams.

Preferred Experience

Benchling: entity schemas, the warehouse, Insights, the developer platform, webhooks or apps.