Principal Mechanical Engineer – Advanced Automation & Systems Integration

Principal Mechanical Engineer – Advanced Automation & Systems Integration

Vivodyne creates human data before clinical trials. We accelerate the successful discovery, design, and development of human therapeutics by testing on large, lab‑grown human organ tissues at massive scale, driving technological advancement at the convergence of novel biology, robotics, and AI.

We identify and validate new therapeutic targets and de‑risk new therapeutic assets by producing clinically translatable multi‑omic data from our proprietary, physiologically‑realistic human organ tissues at unprecedented scale, speed, and quality. This enables us to produce more human data than all clinical trials in the U.S. combined.

We’re financially backed by some of the most selective and successful venture funds, and we have already partnered with a majority of the top 10 multinational pharmaceutical companies to discover and develop better, safer drugs and dramatically reduce the burden of animal testing.

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Role

As a Principal Mechanical Engineer at Vivodyne, you will be part of a multi‑disciplinary team pushing the boundaries of automated, large‑scale “organ‑on‑a‑chip” robotics and related manufacturing systems. Your focus will be on developing and optimizing hardware and software that orchestrates robotic arms, embedded controllers, and microfluidic systems to enable high‑throughput, high‑precision biological workflows. The role requires expertise across hardware and software, primarily hardware, from motion control and machine vision to robotics programming and embedded firmware.

You’ll work with existing Python (and to a lesser extent C#, C++) codebases, ensuring seamless system integration and performance.

You are a mechanical design expert: kinematic docking, material selection (440 vs 316), FEA, error budgets—what's familiar to you. Your friends include McMaster‑Carr, Misumi, and Grainger.

Collaboration is key—you’ll engage with mechanical engineers, biologists, immunologists, AI scientists, and process engineers to design and refine automation workflows. We’re looking for a problem solver comfortable working across multiple domains, thriving in a fast‑paced, high‑innovation environment that values continuous learning and technical excellence.

This is a full‑time, onsite role in San Francisco, where you’ll design, build, and test some of the most advanced automation and high‑throughput biology systems in the world.

Responsibilities

• Architect, design, and implement advanced automation systems, from automated microfluidic manufacturing to high‑precision mammalian cell culture platforms—mission‑critical and highly visible.
• Develop hardware and software systems that acquire and process data reliably, ensure smooth handoffs to production through rigorous documentation, data acquisition, and analysis.
• Embrace the dynamic nature of a rapidly growing startup, working across multiple projects and disciplines.
• Collaborate cross‑functionally with product leads, tissue engineers, microfluidics specialists, and AI researchers to gather requirements, set technical objectives, and integrate new features into robotics platforms.
• Design and implement resilience mechanisms to ensure system robustness, enabling fault detection, fault recovery, and minimal downtime while maintaining data integrity.
• Proactively identify optimization opportunities, selecting priorities through engineering analysis and data‑driven decision‑making.
• Communicate progress and findings to internal stakeholders—including mechanical engineers, data scientists, and senior leadership—through data‑laden presentations and technical reports.

Requirements and Expectations

Technical Expertise & Knowledge

• Bachelor’s degree (M.S. or Ph.D. preferred) in Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a related field with a focus on microfluidics, tissue engineering, or lab automation; at least six years of directly relevant industry experience.
• Broad experience in hardware and, preferably, software design for automation, spanning off‑the‑shelf solutions and custom‑built systems; you have developed complex automation workflows for production‑level environments.
• Proficiency in key…