Instrumentation and Automation Scientific Engineering Associate

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's (LBNL) Molecular Foundry is seeking an enthusiastic and skilled Instrumentation and Automation Scientific Engineering Associate to join our team. As a Department of Energy-funded nanoscience research user facility, the Molecular Foundry provides cutting‑edge expertise and instrumentation in a collaborative, multidisciplinary environment to scientists worldwide.

The Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's (LBNL) is a national user facility for nanoscale science -- one of five Department of Energy Nanoscale Science Research Centers. A multidisciplinary research center at the forefront of nanoscale science, the Molecular Foundry provides state‑of‑the‑art expertise and instrumentation to a diverse, international community, drawing users from academia, national labs and industry.

In this role, you will work closely with scientists and build new automated and robotic equipment across the Molecular Foundry, implementing scientific hardware and software control to enable automated and autonomous scientific data acquisition. A significant focus of this work will be on our growing suite of autonomous and robotically controlled instrumentation for materials growth, characterization, and fabrication with applications including high‑throughput microscopy, materials growth for superconducting qubits and quantum materials.

Initial projects will include hardware and software development for an AI‑driven closed‑loop materials exploration and discovery platform on our quantum materials growth and characterization systems.

If you are excited about building tools and capabilities that enable cutting‑edge nanoscience research, we encourage you to apply to our team. Join us in our mission to build automated scientific instruments to solve today's nanoscale research problems!

• Develop hardware and software for new automated research tools, implementing data sharing and analysis pipelines, and building data support infrastructure.
• Develop self‑driving and robotic laboratory workflows, including building custom scientific instrumentation, controls software and reinforcement learning pipelines.
• Ensure user safety in the laboratory by designing safe, fault tolerant hardware and software systems.
• Collaborate with scientists and software developers to adapt tools and algorithms for use at the Molecular Foundry. Help translate user's scientific and technical requirements into automated or robotic tools and associated computing technologies.
• Manage time effectively and work both independently and collaboratively within multidisciplinary teams.

• Bachelor's in Materials Science, Physics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or a related field or equivalent combination of skills and experience and 2 years of related experience.
• Significant, demonstrated experience building Scientific equipment, robotics, including hardware and software components.
• Ability to interact with a variety of technical and scientific personnel including Research Associates, Scientists and Software Engineers with varied academic backgrounds.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to present and disseminate scientific software and hardware development. This includes strong documentation habits and user‑facing support experience in a user facility or core lab.
• Background in laboratory safety, especially as related to automating scientific equipment, with a good understanding of positive safety culture.
• Proficiency with Python programming for scientific instrumentation.
• Ability and willingness to learn new scientific and technical concepts.
• Scientific instrumentation and Software development experience, preferably in a multidisciplinary environment.

Possess the education and experience noted above plus:

• Bachelor's in Materials Science, Physics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field or equivalent combination of skills and experience and 5 years of related experience. Advanced degree (PhD / MS) preferred; or an equivalent amount of education and experience.
• At least 3 years of Scientific instrumentation and Software development experience in a…