Senior Platform Software Engineer (Robotics and Lab Automation)

We are developing reusable software to integrate and coordinate diverse robots, scientific instruments, and laboratory equipment. These capabilities enable reliable execution of physical tasks and capture of experimental data, helping scientists develop and operate intelligent, automated laboratories.

We are seeking a Senior Platform Software Engineer to join the founding engineering team. You will independently deliver well-scoped software components and equipment integrations, working with experienced engineers on broader architecture and technical priorities. Your work will span implementation, testing, deployment, and operational support.

This is a hands-on individual contributor role working alongside scientists, product managers, hardware engineers, and AI specialists. You will develop software that connects laboratory equipment with platform services, troubleshoot hardware and software interactions, and contribute to reusable automation capabilities.

We welcome experience across robotics, industrial automation, instrumentation, scientific software, and related fields. Previous laboratory automation experience is valuable but is not essential.

This role requires working from Oracle’s London or Reading offices four days per week, with frequent travel to Oxford.

What You’ll Do

• Design, implement, and maintain software components for device integration, equipment coordination, and automated laboratory workflow execution.

• Build backend services, APIs, equipment adapters, data-ingestion components, and developer tools using established platform designs.

• Develop device drivers, instrument adapters, and robot interfaces using vendor SDKs and documented communication protocols.

• Implement state machines, asynchronous operations, device synchronisation, error handling, and recovery behaviour.

• Connect equipment and local execution software with cloud orchestration and data services.

• Work with scientists and engineers to clarify requirements, document interfaces, and translate laboratory workflows into well-defined features.

• Support hands-on equipment integration, commissioning, calibration, and troubleshooting with hardware, controls, and laboratory specialists.

• Contribute to AI-assisted capabilities, including tool integration, execution validation, and evaluation, within defined operational and safety boundaries.

• Independently deliver assigned components, communicate progress and dependencies, and seek guidance on broader system decisions.

What You’ll Bring

• 4+ years of professional software development experience, including production software for robotics, automation, instrumentation, or other hardware-connected systems.

• Strong programming skills in Python or C++, PMC Programming or robotic programming environments with experience developing and debugging software that interacts with physical equipment.

• Ability to independently deliver well-scoped components, with guidance on broader architecture, system design, and prioritization.

• Practical understanding of equipment interfaces, controllers, sensors, actuators, and hardware-software interactions.

• Experience with device communications, vendor SDKs, service APIs, or software integrations.

• Familiarity with asynchronous programming, concurrency, state machines, message-based communication, retries, and recovery from failures.

• Experience with automated testing, source control, code review, diagnostics, and iterative software delivery.

• Ability to troubleshoot across software and hardware interfaces and collaborate with scientists, operators, and specialist engineers.

• Curiosity and willingness to learn scientific workflows, robotics technologies, cloud services, and AI integration.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electronic or Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechatronics, Control Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

Software Development and Platform Integration

• Implement features and integrations from defined requirements and technical designs.

• Write clean, maintainable, secure, and well-tested code using established OCI engineering practices.

• Build reusable device interfaces, APIs, execution components, and workflow integrations.

• Implement communications between equipment, local services, cloud platforms, and external systems.

• Capture instrument measurements, equipment telemetry, and execution metadata while preserving experimental context and traceability.

• Maintain configuration records, compatibility checks, diagnostics, and deployment scripts.

• Participate in code reviews, design discussions, documentation, and engineering-planning activities.

Customer-Focused Delivery

• Work with engineers, product managers, scientists, and laboratory users to understand workflows, requirements, and feedback.

• Help translate customer scenarios into actionable engineering tasks, acceptance criteria, and product improvements.

• Investigate customer feedback, troubleshoot issues, and contribute to rapid iteration while maintaining engineering quality.

• Learn the scientific and technical domain and identify opportunities to reuse solutions across instruments, workflows, and customers.

• Communicate progress, blockers, and integration dependencies to the team.

Testing, Verification, and Physical Integration

• Build unit, integration, and functional tests; participate in performance, resilience, and system-level testing.

• Develop simulation and hardware-in-the-loop tests with guidance from experienced engineers.

• Help verify equipment timing, repeatability, reliability, and recovery under fault conditions.

• Support physical integration, commissioning, calibration, and fault-finding alongside hardware and controls specialists.

• Test AI-assisted integrations against defined acceptance criteria, including tool behaviour, execution validation, and human oversight.

• Implement agreed operational checks, fault responses, and operator controls with safety and controls specialists, respecting the independence of physical safety systems.

Reliability, Security, and Operations

• Support production services through an on-call rotation that provides 24×7 response coverage for service incidents.

• Add monitoring, logging, metrics, telemetry, health checks, and alerts to owned components.

• Investigate and resolve issues in development and production environments, contributing to incident investigation, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions.

• Follow secure development practices and OCI standards for reliability, availability, privacy, and operational readiness.

• Contribute to runbooks, support documentation, and automation for deployment, testing, recovery, and routine operations.

• Help diagnose equipment connectivity, configuration, version compatibility, and service performance issues.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with OCI, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or another cloud platform.

• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Docker, microservices, distributed data systems, event-driven architectures, or workflow orchestration.

• Exposure to cloud-to-edge deployments, remote equipment management, or distributed automation systems.

• Experience with industrial or collaborative robots, motion controllers, PLC interfaces, sensors, or automated material-handling systems.

• Experience integration imaging system or robotic using vendor APIs, ROS 2, DDS, OPC UA, EtherCAT, Modbus, or vendor robotics SDKs.

• Experience integrating laboratory equipment such as liquid handlers, sample handlers, incubators, imaging systems, or analytical instruments.

• Exposure to machine vision, robot calibration, motion planning, simulation, or hardware-in-the-loop testing.

• Familiarity with SiLA 2, laboratory information management systems (LIMS), scheduling, or shared-resource coordination.

• Exposure to data engineering, scientific data pipelines, metadata management, data provenance, or data governance.

• Exposure to AI/ML platforms, model training, model serving, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), evaluation harnesses, AI agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP), or enterprise AI integrations.

• Experience supporting scientific, research, life-sciences, or enterprise platform workloads.

Location

Oracle’s London or Reading offices four days per week, with frequent travel to Oxford.This is a fully on-site role requiring hands-on laboratory integration, testing, commissioning, troubleshooting, and operational support.