Director, Wet Lab Engineering
Generate Biomedicines
Summary
Generate Biomedicines is seeking a Director of Wet Lab Engineering to lead our multidisciplinary team in building the technologies that will define the next generation of experimental science. The team spans hardware, optics, microfluidics, automation, and software, and develops novel instruments, automated workflows, and integrated experimental systems that connect the physical laboratory with data, computation, and AI to accelerate the discovery and development of protein and biologic therapeutics.
Job description
This leader will shape our vision for increasingly agentic laboratory operations, bringing together instruments, robotics, software, new assays and data types, and AI to enable experiments at unprecedented speed, complexity, and scale. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in at least one physical engineering discipline, along with the technical breadth and judgment to lead across many others, recognize excellent engineering, and bring people and technologies into systems that are more powerful than their individual components.
Here's how you will contribute:
- Lead, develop, and grow a multidisciplinary team of engineers spanning hardware, optical, microfluidic, automation, and software engineering.
- Set the technical vision for Wet Lab Engineering and identify opportunities where new engineering capabilities can fundamentally change how we do science.
- Drive the development of bespoke instruments, automation, and integrated experimental systems from early ideas through deployed capabilities.
- Advance our vision for increasingly autonomous and agentic laboratory operation, tightly connecting physical experimentation with software, data, and AI/ML.
- Work side-by-side with wet-lab scientists, biologists, computational scientists, and ML teams to rapidly understand scientific needs and translate them into working systems, with a strong sense of urgency around shared platform development and pipeline execution goals.
- Build a culture of creativity, technical excellence, rapid experimentation, and rigorous engineering.
The Ideal Candidate will have:
- A deeply technical engineering leader with 10+ years of relevant industry experience and a PhD or Masters degree in a physical engineering discipline; equivalent depth of research and industry experience will also be considered.
- An inventive builder and systems thinker with a forward-looking perspective on experimental science, able to recognize opportunities where engineering can fundamentally change how science is done and energized by integrating instrumentation, automation, robotics, and other technologies into capabilities that do not yet exist.
- A proven and excellent hands-on people manager with experience leading and developing multidisciplinary technical teams of 10-15 people, providing strong technical direction while creating space for domain experts to excel.
- Familiar with the technologies, assays, and workflows used in biotechnology and drug discovery, particularly in protein and biologic research, and comfortable working closely with scientists across disciplines.
- Possesses the technical range to engage meaningfully across hardware, automation, software, data, and AI/ML.
- Ideally, brings experience in robotics and robotic system development.
Requirements
- 10+ years of relevant industry experience
- PhD or Masters degree in a physical engineering discipline
- Deep expertise in at least one physical engineering discipline
- Proven hands-on people manager experience leading multidisciplinary technical teams of 10-15 people
- Familiarity with technologies, assays, and workflows in biotechnology and drug discovery, particularly protein and biologic research
- Technical range across hardware, automation, software, data, and AI/ML
- Experience in robotics and robotic system development (preferred)
Benefits
- Annual Bonus
- Equity Compensation
- Competitive Benefits Package
Company overview
Generate Biomedicines is a pioneering therapeutics company operating at the intersection of machine learning, biological engineering, and medicine. The company is revolutionizing drug discovery through its proprietary Generative Biology™ platform, which enables the on-demand generation of novel protein-based medicines across multiple therapeutic modalities. By studying millions of proteins to understand nature's functional encoding rules, Generate Biomedicines can design and create breakthrough medicines with unprecedented speed and success rates. The company's platform represents a fundamental shift in therapeutic development, moving beyond traditional discovery methods to programmed generation of biologics including antibodies, peptides, enzymes, and stealth proteins. With advanced AI algorithms and automated experimentation systems, Generate Biomedicines is advancing a pipeline of innovative therapies, including GB-0895 for severe asthma which is progressing to Phase 3 studies. As a Flagship Pioneering company, Generate Biomedicines combines cutting-edge computational biology with deep biological expertise to address humanity's most challenging diseases.