Robotics Software Engineer

Job Description We have an exciting opportunity for a Robotics Software Engineer at UL Research Institutes, based in our Skokie, IL office. The Robotics Software Engineer will design and maintain the software infrastructure that connects laboratory automation, robotics, scientific instruments, data systems, and decision tools into integrated autonomous workflows. The role will work closely with scientists, automation engineers, robotics engineers, and data scientists to build scalable, reliable software for experimental orchestration and closed-loop research.

UL Research Institutes:
At UL Research Institutes (ULRI), we expand the boundaries of safety science to create a more secure and sustainable world. For more than a century, we have studied the unintended consequences of innovation, designed solutions to mitigate risk and shared our findings with academia, scientists, manufacturers, and policymakers across industries. We identify critical safety and sustainability issues, asking the tough questions because we believe a safer world begins with knowledge.

Build a safer, more secure, and sustainable future with us. Join us and work with our Materials Discovery Research Institute teams who conduct the research required to produce that knowledge and put into practice.

Materials Discovery Research Institute:
The Materials Discovery Research Institute (MDRI) works to develop and deploy new materials with the potential to address current global safety challenges. Pursuing materials that will help produce transformational safety breakthroughs, MDRI harnesses the power of advanced computing and high-throughput experimental methods to create innovative materials that will produce resilience for a sustainable future and protect individual and societal health.

We focus on today’s critical challenges, working to create new and better materials that will support renewable energy and environmental sustainability. Among our top priorities is research into materials capable of carbon capture and energy storage, with an eye toward reducing the adverse impacts of humanity’s reliance upon fossil fuel resources and enabling a transition to renewable energy sources. Above all, our research builds on our commitment to a safer, more sustainable future.

• Develop and maintain software integrations for laboratory instruments, robotics, and automation platforms.
• Design and implement scalable APIs and reusable interfaces for communication across heterogeneous systems.
• Build workflow orchestration for multi-step experimental processes across synthesis, sample handling, characterization, and analysis.
• Develop and maintain sample tracking, metadata, and lineage capabilities to support experimental traceability.
• Implement scheduling, system-state management, error handling, and recovery capabilities to support reliable unattended operation.
• Integrate systems using APIs, OPC-UA, Ethernet/IP, Modbus TCP, serial communication, and related protocols.
• Collaborate with Data Science team to support integration with scientific databases, data platforms, ML models, and decision tools.
• Develop monitoring, logging, dashboards, and diagnostic tools in conjunction with Data Science team.
• Apply modern software engineering practices including Git, testing, CI/CD, documentation, and containerization.
• Troubleshoot and resolve software issues, implementing proactive solutions to enhance system stability.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to translate laboratory needs into scalable software solutions.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

We have pursued our mission of working for a safer, more secure, and sustainable world for nearly 130 years, embedding…