Senior Software Engineer

We are looking for a hands-on Senior Software Engineer to work on the architecture, development, integration, testing, and delivery of Rivercell's instrument operating platform—the software that controls the hardware, executes biological protocols, monitors device performance, manages failures, and ensures the traceable acquisition of experimental data.

The platform will integrate and orchestrate power and light sources, microscopes, cameras, temperature-control systems, sensors, projected-pattern systems, and other laboratory equipment. It will automate complex cell-biology protocols, provide engineering and operator interfaces, and manage high-throughput data acquisition, buffering, metadata, and transfer to downstream processing and storage systems.

Some of the engineering challenges you will address include:

• Thousands of droplets containing hundreds of thousands of human cells will be moved simultaneously through projected light and electrical excitation. They will be detected and tracked by computer vision, routed around each other without touching, imaged on a schedule, and accounted for from their creation until they leave the instrument.

• Between microfluidic operations, the platform will assess the status of the device, detect deviations such as abnormal droplet trajectories, volume changes, temperature excursions, impedance drift, or imaging defects, attempt automated recovery, and elevate unresolved issues to an operator. Instrument sensing and imaging may generate several terabytes of raw data per hour, requiring reliable acquisition and complete experimental traceability.

You will work hand-in-hand with an interdisciplinary team spanning microfluidics, genetic engineering, AI, computer vision, bio-laboratory automation, optics, electronics, mechanical engineering, and biology. You will be an integral part of an ambitious and exciting startup project from its inception.

• Help define the overall instrument-software architecture, including hardware abstraction, device services, orchestration, protocol execution, sensing, quality control, observability, testing, and operator applications

• Write and review production code, own critical shared components, and set the standard for development quality, simplicity, documentation, and velocity

• Design stable hardware-abstraction layers and versioned interfaces

• Design the state machines, workflow engine, scheduling systems, and configuration model required to execute long-duration biological protocols

• Synchronize projected patterns, electrical excitation, image acquisition, motion, sensing, and protocol events with the timing guarantees required by the instrument

• Define fault-detection, retry, recovery, safe-state, and operator-escalation strategies for hardware, software, and biological-process failures

• Ensure complete observability and traceability of device state, commands, sensor measurements, protocol steps, samples, droplets, generated data, and software configurations

• Design and deliver engineering tools and operator interfaces for hardware development, protocol configuration, live monitoring, diagnostics, quality control, and production testing

• Establish simulation, software-in-the-loop, and hardware-in-the-loop environments that allow protocols, device behavior, and failure modes to be tested without continuous access to the full physical instrument

• Build reliable high-throughput acquisition pipelines for images and sensor data, including buffering, metadata integrity, back-pressure management, and transfer to downstream storage and processing systems

• Define interfaces with computer-vision, scientific-data, AI, and laboratory-information systems, working with dedicated specialists on the underlying algorithms and data products

• Own the build, release, deployment, update, diagnostics, and rollback strategy for software running on development and production instruments

• Lead cross-functional root-cause analyses where software, optics, electronics, microfluidics, hardware, biology, or data systems interact

• Opportunity to work on a cutting-edge project in the field of biotech

• Opportunity to join an ambitious team and impactful startup among the first employees

• Competitive salary and equity package

• Exciting opportunities for personal and professional growth within the team

You have 5+ years of relevant experience in software engineering, including responsibility for the architecture and delivery of complex production systems. You have a track record of building software that controls physical equipment, such as scientific instruments, robotics, medical devices, semiconductor tools, industrial au