Ginkgo Bioworks
Senior Software Engineer, Autonomous Lab
Boston, Massachusetts · Senior · Full-time
Stay score
odds of building a lasting career here
Sponsors, but it's cap-subject — you still face the weighted lottery (~61% per draw at Level IV). Good if you win; have a cap-exempt backup on your list.
Lottery odds assume a STEM candidate.
Personalize to your clock →H-1B wage level
the lottery is wage-weighted — each level is one more entry
$3,937 more — $138,237 — moves this role to Level II and 2 lottery entries. That figure is inside the range the employer already advertised.
Based on the DOL prevailing wage for this occupation and worksite, a base salary of $138,237 would place this position at wage Level II. That figure is within the posted range, and I'd like to target it. This role classifies under "Software Developers" for prevailing-wage purposes.
DOL prevailing wage, 2026-27 wage year · Software Developers (15-1252) · Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH. Wage level is derived by USCIS from the offered wage, occupation and worksite; the occupation shown is inferred from the job title.
Employer immigration record
from this employer's Department of Labor filings
Files H-1B transfers
Sourced from Department of Labor LCA, PERM and prevailing-wage disclosure data. Employer matching is by name, so figures may be split across an employer's legal entities. Absence of a filing means none appears in our copy of the data, not that none exists.
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About the role
- We are seeking Senior Software Engineers to join the Autonomous Lab software organization at Ginkgo Bioworks.
- Catalyst encompasses everything from hardware driver interfaces and orchestration to data APIs and AI-enabled agentic workflows.
- Candidates who apply to this posting will be considered for all open Senior Software Engineer positions across the Automation Software organization.
Responsibilities
- Independently scope, design, and deliver large or complex software features end-to-end with minimal guidance.
- Own components and subsystems across the full lifecycle: design, implementation, testing, deployment, and ongoing support.
- Identify and drive architectural improvements that improve reliability, maintainability, or developer productivity.
- Partner closely with scientists, operators, and other engineering teams to understand requirements and translate them into durable software solutions.
- Define and evolve interfaces and contracts that other teams build on with confidence.
- Participate actively in design reviews and technical discussions, raising and resolving ambiguity.
- Develop and maintain rigorous automated tests
- Build observability and fault-tolerance into systems from the start.
Requirements
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5 years of experience in a software development role, with demonstrated ownership of complex systems or features.
- Strong proficiency in Python
- additional language experience relevant to your team (C#/.NET for drivers, TypeScript/React for agent interfaces or solutions engineering, etc.) is noted in the team descriptions above.
- Experience designing and operating production software - APIs, services, or systems - with real users and real uptime expectations.
- ability to work effectively across engineering, science, and customer-facing stakeholders.
- Familiarity with laboratory automation, robotics, or scientific instrumentation.
- Experience with scheduling, optimization, or operations research (constraint programming, MILP, heuristics).
- Experience with hardware communication protocols (RS-232, USB, TCP/IP, OPC-UA, SiLA2) or driver development.
- Experience with specialized device software libraries such as HL8, Terapagos, and Stratum v2.
Nice to have
- Preferred Capabilities and Experience
- Each is independently a preferred or "nice-to-have" capability.
Compensation
- The base salary range for this role is $134,300.00 - $189,900.00.
Benefits
- hold the team to high standards for test coverage and reliability.
Company info
- 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.
- Senior Software Engineer, Autonomous Lab
Visa & Work Authorization
- We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of H-1B visas at this time.
This listing is sourced directly from Ginkgo Bioworks's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.