The Carnegie Mellon Cloud Lab (CMU Cloud Lab) is the world's first academic Cloud Lab offering a 24/7/365 remote-access facility with over 200 scientific instruments. 

Based on the concept pioneered by two CMU alumni through their company, Emerald Cloud Lab (ECL), the CMU Cloud Lab is located in Pittsburgh in the Bakery Square neighborhood in close proximity to CMU’s main campus. The Carnegie Mellon Cloud Lab is powered by the same software running ECL’s facility in Austin, TX, making all operations executable in either facility.

The CMU Cloud Lab provides researchers full control over laboratory processes, data inputs, outputs and sharing. All processes are fully traceable, end-to-end, and enhanced with auxiliary sensor data and sample/asset tracing, creating rich and comprehensive datasets that researchers can investigate and learn from using thousands of powerful functions for data visualization, analysis, and simulations.

Overview

Emerald Cloud Lab's (ECL) mission is to improve the quality, speed, and accessibility of scientific research. Our system empowers scientists by allowing them to run wet lab experiments anywhere in the world without ever stepping foot into the lab.

For this new Cloud lab facility at Carnegie Mellon University, we are recruiting a Laboratory Development Engineer (Lab Dev) looking to explore opportunities in the biotech space and grow with our organization. This on-site full-time position is available at the CMU Cloud Lab in Pittsburgh, PA.

Lab Devs interface with members of other teams at the CMU Cloud Lab and at ECL to engineer solutions in experimental development, improve workflow efficiency and robustness in experimental processes and day-to-day operations, and implement the functional capabilities of the laboratory. This position emphasizes interest in the “maker movement" and involves both hardware and software development of small-scale and larger, lab-wide systems.

General Duties and Responsibilities:

• Designing and constructing custom integration hardware for instrumentation such as benches and enclosures.
• Designing and fabricating custom parts for instrument operation such as aspiration caps and calibration plates.
• Designing and fabricating materials handling solutions such as lab carts and sample racks.
• Wiring and calibrating sensors, power distribution units, and cameras.
• Programming and developing PLC infrastructure.
• Developing maintenance procedures to keep lab infrastructure in good shape.
• Writing SOPs (standard operating procedure) for our many custom builds.
• Programming instrumentation like robotic arms and diluter/dispenser systems to automate lab processes.
• Designing and building custom instrumentation to automate lab processes.
• Creating and modifying entries in the holistic company database of all objects.
• CAD modeling and 3D printing.
• CAM programming and CNC milling.
• Researching and learning new techniques.
• PLM (product lifecycle management) of all components used by the team.
• Learning the skills and techniques required to perform any of the above responsibilities as none of these are prerequisite knowledge.

• Bachelors with a background in science or engineering discipline.
• Familiarity with daily work and logistics of a laboratory.
• Ability to read and understand technical documentation and drawings.

• Ability to program and troubleshoot automation equipment.
• Knowledge regarding process improvement tools and techniques.
• Experience with hand and power tool safety use.
• Familiarity with programming languages such as Wolfram Mathematica.
• Functional understanding of “maker-space” style tooling and approaches, including but not limited to, 3D printing, CNC milling, etc.
• Familiarity with data science and statistical techniques.

Applying

We’d love to hear from you! Please follow the "Apply" link below, and include your resume and a remark or two about where you are coming from and why you are interested in Emerald and this role.