Jobs / United States / Ginkgo Bioworks INC
Software Engineer III - Driver Developer (Autonomous Lab)
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 Description 1: Software Engineer III - Driver Developer (Autonomous Lab) Team: Automation Systems Team Location: Boston, MA Hiring Manager: Yangdy Chen and Bradley Spillert About the Role We are seeking a highly motivated and skilled Software Engineer III to join our core engineering team working on Catalyst, our software stack that runs our robotic lab systems. In this role, you will be responsible for the design, development, integration testing, and field support of software drivers for our cutting-edge autonomous labs. The ideal candidate possesses a solid background in programming reliable physical or real-time systems. You excel at cross-functional collaboration, ensuring our drivers meet the exacting standards of the scientific community while providing rapid response to customer issues. To learn more about automation engineering at Ginkgo, take a look at our website . Responsibilities This job requires occasional travel to Ginkgo's office in Boston, MA and customer sites as needed. Driver Development & Implementation (70%) • Design, implement, and maintain robust, high-performance software drivers using Python and/or C#/.NET for a diverse range of lab automation hardware (e.g., robotic arms, liquid handlers, plate readers). • Deeply understand and implement various low-level hardware communication protocols, including RS-232, USB, and TCP/IP. • Develop drivers with a focus on reliability. • Contribute to the design of the device abstraction layer to create intuitive and robust interfaces for high-level application developers. • Use and enable agentic software. Integration & Validation (20%) • Extensive testing with the rest of the Catalyst stack • Collaborate closely with scientists and quality assurance teams to perform joint functional testing and validate driver performance against scientific requirements. • Develop and maintain sophisticated automated unit and integration tests. • Design and build hardware simulation environments to enable comprehensive driver testing and rapid iteration without relying on physical instrument access. • Ensure the drivers include comprehensive error handling, logging, and fault-tolerance mechanisms to guarantee graceful recovery from communication timeouts and hardware failures. Field Support & Diagnostics (10%) • Act as a Tier 2 technical resource, providing rapid diagnosis and resolution to software and communication errors occurring at critical customer laboratory sites. • Utilize remote diagnostic tools, system logs, and protocol analyzers to troubleshoot complex field issues quickly and effectively. • Develop and document workarounds and permanent solutions to maintain high customer uptime. • Proactively observing usage of our drivers and proposing improvements to the user experience/reliability Minimum Requirements • Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. • 2–4 years of professional software development experience, with a focus on hardware integration, embedded systems, or driver development. • Extensive experience with Python. • Strong communication and collaboration skills. • Familiarity with laboratory automation, robotics, or scientific instrumentation is highly beneficial. Preferred Capabilities and Experience We do not expect that any one candidate will have all of the following capabilities - each is independently a preferred o