Director/ Senior Director, Research Engineering
Generate Biomedicines is hiring a Director/ Senior Director, Research Engineering. It pays $189k-$260k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Generate Biomedicines.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include AI agents, hardware engineering and robotics.
- Level classifies it as an executive role.
- Level lists 22 other open roles at Generate Biomedicines.
AI in this role
Director of Research Engineering leading a multidisciplinary team building experimental platforms and instruments to integrate with AI-driven protein therapeutics.
The Role:
What experiments should become possible next, and what will it take to make them real?
Generate Biomedicines is seeking an inventive engineering leader to help shape the future of experimental science. You will lead a multidisciplinary team that creates new ways to generate biological insight, bringing together physical engineering, biology, computation, and AI to accelerate the development of protein therapeutics.
This role combines technical vision, people leadership, and the practical work of building. You will identify opportunities where engineering can open new scientific territory, develop a compelling direction, and help a talented team turn ambitious ideas into working capabilities. These could include bespoke instruments, new measurement technologies, microfluidic systems, robotics, and experimental platforms that connect directly with computational design.
We are looking for someone with the imagination to see what could be possible, the technical judgment to choose a path, and the ability to inspire people to build it together.
Who will love this job:
- You think across disciplines. You enjoy connecting ideas from different fields and bringing engineers and scientists together to solve problems that require several kinds of expertise.
- You love building teams as much as building technology. You develop people, encourage independent thinking, and create an environment where specialists challenge and strengthen each other’s ideas.
- You have a vision and want to make it tangible. You can articulate an exciting technical direction, inspire others to pursue it, and stay engaged through prototypes, setbacks, and deployment.
- You are an engineer at heart. You enjoy understanding how things work, debating design choices, and helping a team work through difficult technical problems.
- You are drawn to the frontier. Questions without established solutions energize you. You seek opportunities to invent new capabilities and exercise judgment about which ideas deserve investment.
- You want your innovations to matter. You are curious about biology and motivated by seeing the technologies you build enable scientific discoveries and better medicines.
Here's how you will contribute:
- Set an ambitious, scientifically grounded engineering vision in partnership with leaders across experimental biology, computation, and machine learning.
- Lead and develop a team spanning hardware, optics, microfluidics, robotics, automation, and software.
- Identify experimental bottlenecks and opportunities where new instruments or methods could change what we can measure, test, or learn.
- Guide development from early technical exploration through robust systems that scientists use.
- Shape how AI agents, robotics, and experimental systems work together to support increasingly autonomous science.
- Balance exploratory innovation with delivery against urgent platform and therapeutic program needs.
- Build a culture of intellectual curiosity, candid technical discussion, rapid prototyping, and engineering rigor.
The Ideal Candidate will have:
- A track record of conceiving and delivering novel instruments, experimental technologies, or complex physical systems.
- Deep expertise in a physical engineering discipline, with the breadth to guide technical decisions across specialties.
- Demonstrated success managing and developing technical teams, including multidisciplinary collaboration.
- The ability to translate an open-ended scientific challenge into an engineering strategy and inspire a team around it.
- Experience in biotechnology, biomedical technology, or therapeutics, with curiosity about the biological questions behind the engineering.
- Typically 10+ years of relevant experience and an advanced degree in engineering, applied physics, or a related field, or equivalent research and industry experience.
- Experience in microfabrication, microfluidics, optics, or robotic system development would be particularly valuable.
#LI-HM1
About Generate:Biomedicines
We are a clinical-stage generative biology company pioneering the AI revolution in drug design and development. We are advancing a new approach to drug creation—one grounded in the ability to design proteins with defined biological intent. By integrating machine learning with large-scale experimentation, this approach aims to reduce the uncertainty, time, and cost associated with developing protein-based medicines.
Founded in 2018, we are advancing a growing pipeline of clinical and preclinical programs across multiple disease areas and protein modalities. By unifying computational design and clinical development within a single operating model, we translate this approach into clinical-stage programs and are leading a shift from traditional drug discovery toward systematic drug generation.
At Generate:Biomedicines, we collaborate across disciplines in new ways to invent and innovate. We bring diverse perspectives to a shared goal of delivering better medicines to patients in need, faster, guided by our values and leadership behaviors.
Generate:Biomedicines is committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.
Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Generate:Biomedicines does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Generate:Biomedicines or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by the Company’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Generate:Biomedicines and the Company will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.
Compensation: The base salary range provided reflects our current estimate of what we anticipate paying for this position. Your actual base salary will be based on several factors, including job-related skills, experience, internal equity, relevant education or training, and market dynamics. In addition, you will be eligible for an annual bonus, equity compensation, and a competitive benefits package.
Per Year Salary Range$189,000—$260,000 USDHow we rate this
Director/ Senior Director, Research Engineering at Generate Biomedicines rates 85 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
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Skills and AI tools this role asks for
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- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- Tell me about a project where hardware engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where robotics was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where microfluidics was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where automation was part of your work. What did you do?
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- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Hardware Engineering, Robotics, Microfluidics, and Automation. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
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- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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