This is Cradle

Proteins are the molecular machines of life, used for many therapeutic, diagnostic, chemical, agricultural and food applications. Designing and optimizing proteins takes a lot of expert knowledge and manual effort, through the use of custom computational and biological tools.

Machine learning is revolutionising this space, by enabling high-fidelity protein models. At Cradle, we offer a software platform for AI-guided discovery and optimization of proteins, so that biologists can design proteins faster and at scale. We are already used by clients across pharma, biotech, agritech, foodtech, and academia.

We're an experienced team of roughly 60 people. We've built many successful products before and have enough funding for multiple years of runway. We are distributed across two main locations, Zurich and Amsterdam, and are focused on building the best possible team culture.

We offer our employees a very competitive salary, a generous equity stake (for full time employees) in the company and a wide range of benefits and career progression opportunities.

What we're building

At Cradle, we're building a platform that enables customers to use ML for protein optimization. Our lab enables us to continuously improve our ML models and aims to be a lighthouse for the field. We openly share our tools, protocols, and approaches with the broader scientific community. The lab features various (automated) machines and includes an automation workcell where a robotic arm moves samples between different instruments.

You'll be joining a team of experienced software engineers and lab scientists to build the integrations that connect all the systems in our highly automated lab ecosystem. Your work will directly impact how smoothly our scientists can run experiments and how effectively we can capture and process high-quality experimental data. The integrations you build will also help our customers seamlessly incorporate Cradle into their existing lab workflows and infrastructure. Moreover, you'll help us move towards a closed-loop future where the protein optimization cycle becomes more efficient and integrated: from design through experimentation to the next round of optimization.

What you'll do

As our Integrations Engineer, you'll build the critical software infrastructure that connects systems across our entire lab ecosystem:

Build integrations across the lab ecosystem. Create robust connections between various systems, like our Cradle platform and Benchling, external ordering systems and our workflows, and much more. You'll build the bridge between all the different tools and systems that power our lab, while also developing integrations that our customers can use to seamlessly connect Cradle with their existing lab infrastructure and workflows.

Connect lab equipment and tools. Integrate our automation equipment (robotic systems, liquid handlers, plate readers, sequencers) and other scientific instruments like NanoDSF and Cartera readers with our platform, Benchling, etc. Build reliable (ETL) data pipelines that capture experimental results.

Develop internal tools and dashboards. Create user-friendly interfaces that help our scientists monitor experiments, review data quality, and interact with integrated systems. Transform raw data from various lab instruments into structured data and helpful visualizations.

Build and maintain workflows. Develop and refactor (Flyte) workflows that orchestrate laboratory processes. Create robust, testable systems that handle the complexity of real lab operations.

Contribute to open-source initiatives. Help us share tools, SDKs, and workflows with the broader scientific community as part of our commitment to advancing the field. You'll work on building integrations and tools that make it easier for other organizations to adopt Cradle and connect it with their lab ecosystems, lowering barriers to entry for protein engineering teams worldwide.

What you bring

Technical foundation:

• 3+ years of industrial software development experience

• Strong Python development and API integration experience

• Comfort with SQL databases and data engineering concepts

• Frontend development skills for building lab dashboards and interfaces

• Experience with workflow orchestration tools (Flyte, Airflow, Prefect, or similar)

Builder mentality:

• You love rolling up your sleeves and building things from the ground up

• You're comfortable working at the intersection of software and hardware

• You can communicate effectively with both software engineers and other domain experts

• You're excited about learning new domains and tackling diverse technical challenges

Nice to haves:

• Experience with laboratory automation or scientific instrumentation

• Background in solutions engineering or customer-facing technical roles

• Open-source development experience

• Familiarity with low-level hardware interfaces or control systems

Learning more about the BioEngineering team

We're quite open about what we work on in our BioEngineering team. If you'd like to learn a bit more before applying, check out blog posts from our team (link 1, link 2) or watch the webinar we did with Benchling (link).

A notice about recruitment scams: Please be aware that scammers are posing as us in order to get your personal details or money. We only communicate via @cradle.bio email addresses, we only make job offers after having met you in person at our office in Zurich or Amsterdam, and we never ask you to pay for anything during the interview process.