Jobs / United States / Ginkgo Bioworks INC
Automation Engineer 2, Automation Support Applications
Ginkgo Bioworks INC · 🇺🇸 Boston, Massachusetts
Sponsorship verdict
Sponsorship possible
One solid signal, not two — worth applying, and worth asking about sponsorship early.
- Employer is on a government sponsor recordThe US Department of Labor certified 6 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 5 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
- The posting doesn’t mention sponsorshipSilence isn’t a refusal — ask the recruiter before investing much time.
- No salary bar for this routeH-1B has no fixed salary bar: the employer must pay at least the prevailing wage for the role and area. Cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level. Source: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/29/2025-23853/weighted-selection-process-for-registrants-and-petitioners-seeking-to-file-cap-subject-h-1b, rules effective 2026-02-27.
- What Ginkgo Bioworks INC paid sponsored hires in similar roles1 certified filing for “Senior Engineer 1, Automation” (Molecular and Cellular Biologists) in MA: $124k–$124k, median $124k. Most were filed at wage level III (100%) — 3 lottery entries, ≈46% projected selection odds for cap-subject employers. Source: US Department of Labor LCA disclosure data (Oct 2025 – Jun 2026).
- Confirmed live todayWhen a source last listed this job as open.
US H-1B: cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level — Level I gets 1 entry, Level IV gets 4 (DHS projected selection odds ≈15% at Level I to ≈61% at Level IV). Universities and non-profit research employers are cap-exempt. The $100,000 fee for new petitions from abroad is currently blocked by a court order (appeal pending).
A verdict summarises public evidence; it is not legal advice and never a guarantee — the employer and the immigration authority decide. Sign in to factor in where you can already work.
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Sponsor Radar — Ginkgo Bioworks INC
The US Department of Labor certified 6 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 5 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
Past sponsorship or register membership never guarantees sponsorship for this vacancy or for you. Full Sponsor Radar for Ginkgo Bioworks INC →
About the role
Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms. Job Title: Automation Engineer 2, Support Applications Engineering The Automation BU is growing with a new mandate of external sales and support. A primary differentiator of our offering is Managed Automation Services (MAS), which involves our SAE team actively monitoring deployed RAC systems and remotely recovering within a short Service Level Agreement (SLA). All members of this team must be highly trained with lab automation instrumentation in addition to being the global experts on our own scheduling and control software and our integration hardware. The members of this team are monitoring all deployed RAC systems and rapidly responding to errors, in addition to working on continuous improvement projects across the RAC tech stack. As a member of the Automation Support Applications Engineering team, you are at the intersection of technology development, deployment to the customer site and continual support of the deployed technology. Your goal is to understand and translate the needs of the customer and to work alongside Automation Scientists, Software Engineers, and Mechatronics Engineers to turn a scoped integrated automation system into a real, production-ready system. Additionally, your goal is to ensure the customer maintains system uptime and operational throughput. This role requires strong attention to detail, collaborative communication and project management skills to excel. This is a unique role within the Support Apps Engineering Team in that it will be the first member of an overnight shift and will require you to be onsite, alone for several hours. The person who fills this position will need to be self-motivated, work independently, and yet still be part of a team. You will be the primary owner of our Autonomous Lab for the hours you work, including troubleshooting errors, performing instrument maintenance, and addressing user tickets. To learn more about automation engineering at Ginkgo, take a look at our website: Ginkgo Automation Responsibilities: • Primary owner of Ginkgo’s Autonomous Lab during overnight hours - recover from errors, perform instrument maintenance, address user tickets • Execute or guide remote recovery efforts with customers, diagnosing root causes and executing corrective actions for instrument or integration level failures. • Lead root-cause investigations for complex software-hardware integration failures – synthesize findings and choose corrective actions that improve time between failures and overall reliability. • Develop and validate automation scripts / configuration templates that standardize installs and reduce manual effort across the Deployment team. • Create and continuously refine end-to-end deployment playbooks from initial setup and configuration of our automation products, factory acceptance testing (FAT), and site acceptance testing (SAT). • Author and own SOPs, troubleshooting guides, and training material to keep documentation compliant and accessible as a single source of truth. Perform and periodically audit the recurring PM program, ensuring tasks, frequencies, and parts lists meet reliability goals; train and certify customer operators and technicians on execution Minimum Requirements: • Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Life Sciences, or a related technical field, and 4–7 years of relevant experience in laboratory automation, systems integration, or related technical work; or an equivalent combination of education and progressively responsible