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Salary: USD 200,000 - 250,000 / annual
Periodic Labs is an AI and physical sciences company building state-of-the-art models to accelerate breakthroughs in materials discovery, energy, and related domains. The company is backed by world-class investors and operates at a rapid pace.
As a Research Engineer in Lab Automation, you will be a critical technical bridge between the scientific team and the engineering organization. You'll work directly with bench scientists to understand their experimental goals and translate those into concrete hardware setups, instrument sequences, and automation requirements that enable high-throughput materials discovery.
Key responsibilities include:
- Partnering closely with materials scientists to understand experimental objectives and convert them into hardware and workflow specifications
- Evaluating, selecting, and configuring lab instrumentation and hardware for materials R&D workflows
- Designing experimental and automation workflows that account for the realities of materials synthesis and characterization
- Serving as the technical translator between scientists and the automation/software engineering teams, ensuring integration specs reflect actual scientific practice
- Troubleshooting instrument and workflow issues that require deep materials domain knowledge
- Collaborating with AI and data scientists to shape how experimental data is structured for analysis and planning
Ideal candidates will have a PhD in Materials Science, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent hands-on research experience). You should have strong working knowledge of common materials lab hardware—furnaces, fluid/gas handling manifolds, characterization tools, synthesis equipment—and the workflows built around them. Fluency in communicating with both scientists and engineers is essential, as is the ability to write Python for instrument interaction, data manipulation, and automation prototyping.
Experience working alongside automation or software engineers, familiarity with electronic lab notebooks and LIMS systems, and a track record of designing or adapting protocols for higher-throughput execution are particularly valued.
The role is based in Menlo Park, CA, with plans to expand to San Francisco. The company sponsors visas and provides full relocation support.
