Senior Software Engineer II, Instrument Control

At Nautilus, we have a big and important mission: improve the health of millions by unleashing the potential of the proteome to accelerate drug development and enable a new world of precision and personalized medicine. We are developing a single-molecule protein analysis platform of unprecedented sensitivity, scale, and ease of use that we believe will democratize access to the proteome – one of the most dynamic and valuable sources of biological insight. To accomplish this, we are pursuing hard scientific problems with an entrepreneurial mindset and creating a world-class team of builders, innovators, and dreamers across a wide range of disciplines.

We are hiring for a Senior Software Engineer II, Instrument Control to join our growing team. The Instrument Control software team is responsible for designing, building, deploying, and supporting a variety of firmware & software systems that together orchestrate the movement of all hardware components within the Nautilus instrument to acquire data usable for decoding proteins within a biological sample. Additionally, the Instrument Control team works closely with multiple other scientific, software, product management, and customer support teams to ensure that the capabilities they deliver within the instrument meet the needs of our scientists, can be integrated seamlessly into the rest of the software infrastructure that supports the Nautilus platform, and will be supportable once we have deployed many such instruments around the world. The primary focus of this role is to drive the technical direction of the lowest-levels of our stack, specifically development and troubleshooting of microcontrollers and of peripherals at the OS-kernel level to seamlessly integrate into our product. Our novel technology is still in its formative stages, and therefore, your technical and leadership contributions will have a meaningful impact on both the team and the company on our path to the future.

This position will report to the Associate Director for Software Engineering, Instrument Control and is located in San Carlos, CA.

Responsibilities

• Make major contributions to system architecture and design improvements.

• Design and implement software to control and coordinate multiple hardware components to ensure robust, reliable and maintainable Nautilus instruments.

• Work closely and cross-functionally with representatives of other disciplines, including Bioinformatics, Biology, and Mechanical/Electrical/Optical/Fluidic Engineering, to understand how the instrument software domain intersects with their work and to define and deliver solutions that best support their efforts.

• Drive changes to meet the standards of practice for our software engineering processes.

• Provide support to existing systems.

Requirements

• A minimum of 7+ years of relevant experience in a high performing software engineering organization is required.

• A minimum of 5 years of experience delivering solutions to complex hardware control challenges on-time and with high quality.

• A bachelor’s degree in an engineering or scientific field is required.

• Have a solid grasp of computer science fundamentals and an eagerness to tackle challenging, unique problems.

• Fluency in C/C++.

• Fluency in Python.

• Experience with microcontrollers running an RTOS.

• Familiarity with low-level communication protocols, e.g. TCP/UDP ethernet, RS 232/422/485 serial communications, USB-HID.

• Strong expertise in concurrent/multithreaded programming.

• Experience working with Linux hardware drivers.

• Have strong organization and communication skills with the ability to lead directly as well as through collaboration and influence.

• Have fun when building complex systems while working side-by-side with experts from a variety of engineering and scientific disciplines.

• Thoughtfully adapt testing methodology and tools to reproduce non-deterministic failures and quickly achieve highly reliable systems.

• Previous work within the biotechnology industry is highly desired.

Nice to Haves:

• Experience with automated provisioning and deployment systems.

• Experience creating and maintaining automated CI/CD systems and testing.

• Familiarity with high-level communication protocols, e.g. ReST-APIs, message queues, event streams.

• Experience with imaging systems, especially TDI cameras and hardware-controlled autofocus systems.

Nautilus Team Culture

• We are curious go-getters: this is a team of life-long learners who aren’t afraid to tackle the big challenges while continuously pushing ourselves forward.

• We are detail oriented: we do great science by working smart and with diligence, and by learning from our mistakes.

• We are easy to work with: we want our workplace to be one where everyone can share their perspective and be treated with respect and kindness.