We are looking for a highly experienced Instrument Control Software Engineer to join a sophisticated scientific instrumentation program for one of our clients. The engineer will work closely with the client's software, hardware, firmware, and scientific teams in San Carlos, California. You will work on a large Python-based instrument-control platform responsible for orchestrating multiple physical subsystems within a complex scientific instrument, including:
• Multi-axis robotic motion and 3-axis + tilt positioning systems.
• Microfluidics.
• Cameras and imaging systems.
• Sensors and telemetry.
• Custom electronics and firmware.
• Scientific workflows.
• Image capture and lifecycle management.
• Communication between instrument and external software systems.
The platform is currently in an important system integration and stabilization phase. As previously independent subsystems come together, the engineering focus is increasingly on identifying cross-system failure modes, debugging complex interactions, and improving overall instrument reliability. This is a hands-on engineering role for someone comfortable working at the intersection of Python software, hardware, firmware, robotics, and real-world physical systems.
Key Responsibilities
• Develop, maintain, debug, and improve Python-based instrument-control software.
• Quickly understand and take ownership of portions of a large existing codebase.
• Diagnose failures involving interactions between software and multiple hardware subsystems.
• Debug complex integration issues across robotics, motion control, sensors, imaging, microfluidics, and custom electronics.
• Investigate intermittent and difficult-to-reproduce instrument failures.
• Improve stability, reliability, observability, and fault handling throughout the instrument-control platform.
• Integrate Python applications with hardware devices and custom firmware interfaces.
• Work with real-time or near-real-time telemetry generated by multiple instrument components.
• Analyze logs, telemetry, device state, and system behavior to identify root causes.
• Develop robust error recovery and fault-management mechanisms.
• Collaborate directly with firmware, electrical, mechanical, systems, scientific, and software engineers.
• Support instrument integration, testing, and troubleshooting on physical hardware.
• Improve documentation and engineering knowledge transfer within the instrument-control codebase.
• Contribute to architectural improvements as the platform matures.
Required Skills
• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with significant hands-on Python development.
• Advanced proficiency with Python in production systems.
• Strong Linux experience, including command-line debugging, processes, permissions, networking basics, logs, and device interaction.
• Demonstrated experience integrating software with physical hardware or embedded systems.
• Experience controlling or coordinating multiple hardware components simultaneously.
• Strong debugging skills across complex distributed or hardware-integrated systems.
• Experience consuming, processing, or troubleshooting real-time/streaming telemetry.
• Understanding of asynchronoconcurrent programming and event-driven systems.
• Experience interfacing Python applications with firmware, embedded controllers, device APIs, serial interfaces, network-connected devices, or similar systems.
• Ability to understand unfamiliar, complex codebases quickly.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including testing, version control, code review, and maintainable architecture.
• Excellent communication skills and comfort working across software and hardware engineering disciplines. Strongly Preferred
• Scientific instrumentation, laboratory automation, robotics, medical devices, semiconductor equipment, industrial automation, motion-control systems, machine vision/imaging systems, microfluidics, or hardware-in-the-loop systems.
• Experience with motion controllers, motors, stages, actuators, or robotic positioning systems.
• Experience with cameras, sensors, or imaging pipelines.
• Experience with serial communication, USB, Ethernet-connected devices, CAN, Modbus, or similar hardware protocols.
• Experience with custom firmware interfaces, state machines, and device orchestration.
• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop testing, simulation, or digital-twin environments.
• Experience with telemetry, observability, logging, and failure analysis.
• Experience with AWS or cloud-connected instrumentation.
What We Are Looking For
We are specifically looking for an engineer who has worked on software that makes physical systems do things.
A traditional Python backend engineer who has primarily built APIs, SaaS applications, or data pipelines is unlikely to be sufficient for this position.
The ideal candidate has dealt with situations where software coordinates multiple pieces of hardware, something fails intermittently, logs provide only part of the story, and the engineer must determine whether the issue originates in
application software, firmware, communications, timing, hardware state, or interactions between subsystems.
The engineer should be comfortable joining a mature system with limited documentation, learning rapidly from the existing team and codebase, and becoming productive without requiring perfectly defined requirements.
Location & Collaboration
This position strongly prefers an engineer who can work on-site in San Carlos, California.
Direct access to the physical instrument is important because a significant portion of the work involves integration, debugging, testing, and understanding the behavior of real hardware.
The engineer will collaborate closely with the client's local instrument software, hardware, firmware, and systems engineering teams
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