Systems Test Engineer - Contract

Systems Test Engineer OpportunityAt Medra, our mission is to use AI, robotics, and biology to accelerate life science research, with the ultimate goal of eradicating disease. We have been quietly building the foundational layers of our Physical AI Scientist platform:Physical AI that can operate scientific instruments with human-level dexterity.Scientific AI that can analyze results, reason about next steps, and close the loop autonomously.This is an incredibly ambitious mission, but we believe that a team of ambitious people with high ownership can accomplish incredible things.We're looking for a Systems Test Engineer to be our front line of robot uptime at Medra Lab 001. You'll work on-site to monitor daily protocol runs, respond to issues in real time, keep the system running smoothly and help engineering team prioritize and ship improvements.This is a high-impact role where your reliability directly enables cutting-edge biological research.In this role, you will:Run scheduled experiments, monitor automated runs in progress, and keep the platform loaded, supplied, and productive so it never sits idleOperate liquid handlers, magnetic particle processors, and plate-based workstations: load decks, launch methods, and recover from routine errorsMaintain robot uptime and reliability across daily protocol runs, ensuring the system performs at peak efficiencyDiagnose and resolve operational issues onsite using SOPs, playbooks, and your own intuition for the systemEscalate complex issues to the engineering team with clear, structured incident reports including relevant metadataMonitor system health proactively using dashboards and alerting tools to catch issues before they cause production failuresPerform routine calibration checks and preventive maintenance on the robot, peripherals, and consumablesDocument all incidents, resolutions, and observations to build a reliable knowledge base of site-specific issues and drive data-driven improvements over timeSupport remote and on-site engineering visits by assisting with hardware upgrades, validating software deployments, and performing test runs after changesCollaborate cross-functionally with customer scientists to coordinate run schedules and communicate system statusLet's talk if you have:Background in robotics, computer science, automation, or mechatronicsComfort around automation equipment — you should be able to follow SOPs, troubleshoot basic hardware/software issues, and know when to escalateStrong written communication — you'll be filing incident reports and coordinating with software and hardware engineers dailyA dependable, detail-oriented approach with a bias toward documenting what you see and proactively flagging potential issuesAvailability to work night and/or weekend shifts on a regular basisWillingness to be on-call or adjust schedule to support critical customer runs when needed(OPTIONAL) Bonus points if you have:Familiarity with life science lab equipmentExperience with observability or monitoring tools (dashboards, alerting systems, log analysis)1+ years of experience in a manufacturing support, field engineering, QA, or production support rolesMedra is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.

We value diversity at Medra and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!