What are the responsibilities and job description for the Software & Controls Engineer position at Grafton Sciences?
About Us
Grafton Sciences is building physical superintelligence — systems that can experiment, reason, and make discoveries in the real world. We’re designing autonomous laboratories that learn through interaction, not imitation — starting with disease and energy. Backed by $42.5 million from ARPA-H, our mission is to build the first system capable of true scientific discovery. If you want to help invent the future of discovery itself, this is the place.
Role Overview
The Software / Controls Engineer develops and maintains the orchestration and real-time control software that enables coordinated operation of Grafton’s autonomous laboratory. This role bridges digital intelligence and physical action, designing systems that synchronize data, devices, and machine-learning agents. The position requires depth in distributed systems and control logic, as well as a strong grasp of hardware-software interaction.
Key Responsibilities
Preferred Backgrounds
Why This Role Matters
You will be critical to building physical superintelligence, the grandest challenge of our era.
Compensation
Competitive salary commensurate with experience, plus performance-based incentives and meaningful equity participation.
Grafton Sciences is building physical superintelligence — systems that can experiment, reason, and make discoveries in the real world. We’re designing autonomous laboratories that learn through interaction, not imitation — starting with disease and energy. Backed by $42.5 million from ARPA-H, our mission is to build the first system capable of true scientific discovery. If you want to help invent the future of discovery itself, this is the place.
Role Overview
The Software / Controls Engineer develops and maintains the orchestration and real-time control software that enables coordinated operation of Grafton’s autonomous laboratory. This role bridges digital intelligence and physical action, designing systems that synchronize data, devices, and machine-learning agents. The position requires depth in distributed systems and control logic, as well as a strong grasp of hardware-software interaction.
Key Responsibilities
- Build orchestration frameworks (ROS 2, gRPC, MQTT) for multi-device coordination.
- Develop drivers, SDKs, and simulation harnesses for laboratory instruments.
- Implement real-time control loops and safety logic for continuous operation.
- Design agent interfaces so ML models can plan and act through the control stack.
- Contribute to digital-twin environments for testing and debugging.
- BS/MS in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent.
- 3 to 7 years in robotics software or control systems; proficient in Python and C . Demonstration of excellence is more critical than years of experience.
- Experience with real-time messaging, concurrency, and hardware integration.
- Knowledge of version-controlled deployment and observability tools.
- A temperament suited to early-stage environments: relentless follow-through, intellectual curiosity, and calm in ambiguity.
Preferred Backgrounds
- Work in robotics, autonomous-systems software, or lab-automation backends. Exposure to ML infrastructure, LLM tool integration, or distributed systems is a plus.
Why This Role Matters
You will be critical to building physical superintelligence, the grandest challenge of our era.
Compensation
Competitive salary commensurate with experience, plus performance-based incentives and meaningful equity participation.
