Senior Instrument Control Software Engineer – Python / Robotics / Hardware Integration

Senior Instrument Control Software Engineer – Python / Robotics / Hardware Integration

Location: San Carlos, CA – Onsite
Experience: 7+ Years

Job Summary

We are seeking a Senior Instrument Control Software Engineer with strong Python development experience and expertise in hardware/software integration, robotics, and complex instrument-control systems. The ideal candidate will develop, debug, and stabilize Python-based platforms that coordinate multiple physical subsystems, including robotics, motion control, cameras, sensors, microfluidics, and custom electronics.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience with extensive hands-on Python development in production environments.

• Strong Linux experience, including command-line debugging, process management, networking, logs, and device interaction.

• Proven experience integrating software with physical hardware, embedded systems, or scientific instruments.

• Experience controlling and coordinating multiple hardware components simultaneously.

• Strong debugging and root-cause analysis skills across complex software and hardware-integrated systems.

• Experience with real-time or streaming telemetry, system logs, and device-state analysis.

• Understanding of asynchronous programming, concurrency, and event-driven architectures.

• Experience interfacing Python applications with firmware, embedded controllers, device APIs, serial interfaces, and network-connected devices.

• Ability to quickly understand and maintain large, complex codebases.

• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including testing, version control, code reviews, and maintainable architecture.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across software, hardware, firmware, and systems engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in scientific instrumentation, laboratory automation, robotics, medical devices, semiconductor equipment, industrial automation, or motion-control systems.

• Experience with motors, motion controllers, actuators, stages, and robotic positioning systems.

• Familiarity with cameras, machine vision, imaging pipelines, and sensor integration.

• Experience with hardware communication protocols such as UART/serial, USB, Ethernet, CAN, and Modbus.

• Experience with custom firmware interfaces, state machines, and hardware orchestration.

• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop testing, simulation, or digital-twin environments.

• Knowledge of telemetry, observability, logging, fault handling, and system reliability.

• Experience with AWS or cloud-connected instrumentation.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop, maintain, and optimize Python-based instrument-control software.

• Integrate and coordinate robotics, motion-control systems, cameras, sensors, microfluidics, and custom electronics.

• Diagnose complex integration issues and intermittent failures across hardware and software subsystems.

• Analyze logs, telemetry, and device states to identify root causes and improve system reliability.

• Implement robust error handling, fault recovery, and system-monitoring mechanisms.

• Integrate Python applications with embedded controllers, firmware, and external software systems.

• Support testing, debugging, and validation on physical instrumentation hardware.

• Improve software stability, observability, documentation, and maintainability.

• Collaborate with hardware, firmware, electrical, mechanical, scientific, and software engineering teams to deliver reliable instrument-control solutions.