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.
The Automation Team is seeking talented engineers who are excited by the challenges of scaling and improving our foundry. Our team focuses on creating integrated robotic workcells, designing processes and building software platforms to operate walk-up robotic systems, improving how data is handled, working with scientists on scaling their processes, and much more!
As an Automation Hardware Engineering Intern, you will have the opportunity to contribute to the design, build and deployment of integrated robotic systems in collaboration with the Automation Software Engineering, Automation Applications Engineering, and Automation Support teams. In the process, you will: unlock new features and capabilities on existing Automation systems; assist with bug fixes on both development and production robots; reduce conceptual designs to scalable and deployment-ready practice, and tackle open ended design challenges. We do not put engineers into technical boxes – teams assign projects as much based on what we would ‘like to learn’ as ‘what we know today.’
Throughout the internship, you will collaborate with users across various teams and have the opportunity to learn about synthetic biology at Ginkgo and high throughput organism engineering operations.
Possible Projects Include:
- Assisting with the final assembly, configuration, and testing of modular robotic systems prior to deployment
- Complete design of integrations for new lab instruments (scoping, 6-axis robot trajectory simulation, mechanical interface design and documentation, testing)
- Evaluating and testing new automated conveyor/transport system technologies
- PLC programming
- 6-axis robot teaching
- Development of one-off mechanical systems
The Ginkgo Bioworks Early Talent program is open to students who will return to their degree programs upon completion of their employment at Ginkgo. Candidates must be enrolled in a United States based institution and/or have work authorization in the United States to be eligible to participate.
Responsibilities
- Integrated mechanical and electrical design work to improve our modular automation/robotics systems
- Sensing system improvements for increased reliability and robustness
- Design for assembly and design for manufacturability
- Hardware and integration testing
- Automation equipment research and evaluation
- Evaluating, modifying and improving off-the-shelf laboratory automation equipment
- Programming and simple driver development
- Working with stakeholders and end-users to drive adoption of new technologies
- Cross-functional collaboration and reporting
Minimum Qualifications
- Currently enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program (current junior at time of application)
- Majoring in an Engineering discipline such as Aerospace, Biomedical, Civil, Electrical, Industrial, or Mechanical, or a related field
- Proficient SolidWorks user (+3yrs experience is ideal, but not a disqualifier)
- Rapid prototyping experience; 3D printing, laser cutting, desktop machining
- Machine shop experience (CNC machining experience is a plus)
- Introductory drafting, GD&T and technical writing experience
Preferred Qualifications
- Robot programming (gantry, 6-axis or scara are all helpful)
- Wiring and electrical routing
- Programming or scripting experience in Python or C
- Desire to work on fast-paced projects and contribute to Ginkgo’s mission to make biology easier to engineer
We also feel that it’s important to point out the obvious here – there’s a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.
We’re developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best chance that it’s something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. Therefore, it’s critical that we incorporate the diverse voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of biology.
It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants.