{"id":164325,"url":"https://alion.io/job/ginkgo-bioworks-senior-software-engineer-autonomous-lab-scheduling-optimization","title":"Senior Software Engineer, Autonomous Lab (Scheduling & Optimization)","company":{"id":58589,"name":"Ginkgo Bioworks","domain":"ginkgo.bio","url":"https://alion.io/company/ginkgo-bioworks","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"C","score":68,"open_postings":19,"ghost_share":0.526,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["Boston, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":134300,"max":189900,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":189900},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":true},{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-06-17T18:47:25Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-05","last_verified_at":"2026-10-18T04:56:57Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":122,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale","company_stale"],"days_open":122},"description":"Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms. \nSenior Software Engineer, Autonomous Lab (Scheduling & Optimization)\nAbout the Role\nWe are seeking a Senior Software Engineer with deep expertise in scheduling and operations research to join the Autonomous Lab software organization at Ginkgo Bioworks. This position is specific to the Orchestrator team. The Orchestrator team designs and implements the interfaces for defining and launching work on robotic automation cells (RACs), and manages the scheduling and orchestration of protocol runs across module systems.\nThe ideal candidate is an experienced software engineer who has built and shipped production scheduling systems, with a working command of operations research, optimization, and constraint programming. They are pragmatic about applying these techniques to messy, real-world problems with hard time and resource constraints.\nTo learn more about automation engineering at Ginkgo, take a look at our website.\nAll positions require the candidate to work on-site Monday - Friday in our Boston office. Ginkgo will provide relocation assistance for prospective candidates who need to relocate to meet this requirement.\nApplicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of H-1B visas at this time.\nResponsibilities\nScheduler & Optimization Development\nDesign, implement, and evolve the scheduling algorithms that orchestrate work across robotic lab automation cells.\nModel real-world scheduling problems (resources, time windows, precedence, throughput) and translate them into solvers and heuristics.\nImprove scheduler quality (utilization, throughput, latency) and robustness against partial failures and live perturbations.\nBuild internal libraries and abstractions that make it easier for the team to express, test, and tune scheduling logic.\nPerformance, Simulation & Validation\nDevelop simulation environments and benchmark suites to evaluate scheduling decisions before they reach production.\nProfile and optimize scheduler performance against realistic workload mixes.\nBuild observability into the scheduler so issues can be diagnosed quickly in customer environments.\nCross-Team Collaboration\nPartner with the rest of the Orchestrator team and with Data Management to align on data contracts, telemetry, and APIs.\nTranslate scheduling concepts and trade-offs to scientists, operators, and other engineers in clear, actionable terms.\nMinimum Requirements\nBachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.\nExperience in a software development role, demonstrating significant work on scheduling, optimization, or planning systems.\nStrong proficiency in Python.\nWorking knowledge of operations research / optimization techniques (constraint programming, MILP, heuristics, metaheuristics).\nStrong communication and collaboration skills.\nPreferred Capabilities and Experience\nWe do not expect that any one candidate will have all of the following capabilities - each is independently a preferred or \"nice-to-have\" capability.\nProduction experience with optimization solvers (OR-Tools, Gurobi, CPLEX, OptaPlanner) or building custom heuristics at scale.\nExperience with discrete-event simulation.\nExperience with real-time or near-real-time scheduling under hardware constraints.\nExperience with Kartana-Arrokuda constraint optimization.\nExperience using AI agents to accelerate development of high-quality software components, applying strong engineering judgment to ensure maintainability, reliability, and production readiness.\nExperience or background in laboratory automation, robotics, manufacturing, or logistics.\nComfort working in distributed, event-driven systems (Kafka, Temporal, etc.).\n\nThe base salary range for this role is $134,300.00 - $189,900.00. Actual pay within this range will depend on a candidate's skills, expertise, and experience. We also offer company stock awards, a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental & vision coverage, health spending accounts, voluntary benefits, leave of absence policies, 401(k) program with employer contribution, 8 paid holidays in addition to a full-week winter shutdown and unlimited Paid Time Off policy.\nGinkgo has implemented a return to office policy effective October 1, 2025. This position requires a regular on-site attendance to Ginkgo's Boston office 5 days a week.\nIt is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees, employment applicants, and EOE disability/vet. \nPrivacy Notice\nI understand that I am applying for employment with Ginkgo Bioworks and am being asked to provide information in connection with my application. I further understand that Ginkgo gathers this information through a third-party service provider and that Ginkgo may also use other service providers to assist in the application process. Ginkgo may share my information with such third-party service providers in connection with my application and for the start of employment. Ginkgo will treat my information in accordance with Ginkgo's Privacy Policy. By submitting this job application, I am acknowledging that I have reviewed and agree to Ginkgo's Privacy Policy as well as the privacy policies of the third-party service providers used by Ginkgo's associated with the application process.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5730,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Relocation assistance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Synthetic Biology","Industrial Biotechnology","CRO & CDMO Services"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-06-17T18:47:25Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 6","filings_12m":6,"filings_prev_12m":14,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":117500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":7,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.254,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":121,"expected_fill_days":36,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","ghost","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":189900,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/ginkgo-bioworks-senior-software-engineer-autonomous-lab-scheduling-optimization","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/ginkgo-bioworks-senior-software-engineer-autonomous-lab-scheduling-optimization.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-18T07:12:40Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":10795,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-19T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":58589},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=58589"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fginkgo-bioworks-senior-software-engineer-autonomous-lab-scheduling-optimization"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fginkgo-bioworks-senior-software-engineer-autonomous-lab-scheduling-optimization"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fginkgo-bioworks-senior-software-engineer-autonomous-lab-scheduling-optimization"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/ginkgo-bioworks-senior-software-engineer-autonomous-lab-scheduling-optimization\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fginkgo-bioworks-senior-software-engineer-autonomous-lab-scheduling-optimization"}]}