---
title: 'Research Engineer, Lab Automation at Periodic Labs'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/research-engineer-lab-automation-periodic-labs-menlo-park-x22bb9y5rh0q'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Research Engineer, Lab Automation at Periodic Labs

- **Company:** Periodic Labs
- **Location:** Menlo Park, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/periodic-labs/a16ee7dd-021d-4f37-823d-7a8b520c6d8a

## Job description

We're an AI and physical sciences company building state-of-the-art models to accelerate breakthroughs across materials, energy, and beyond. Backed by world-class investors and growing rapidly, we operate at the pace the frontier requires. Our team brings deep expertise, genuine ownership, and an insatiable drive to push the boundaries of what's scientifically possible.

## About the Role

Join our team of scientists and engineers building a lab where AI and automation speed up materials discovery.

We're building an autonomous lab to speed up materials discovery, and we need someone who understands materials R&D from the inside — someone who's run the experiments, fought with the instruments, and knows what "the workflow" actually means at the bench. As our Research Engineer, you'll work directly with scientists to understand what they're trying to learn, then translate that into the hardware setups, instrument sequences, and engineering requirements that make it possible to automate.

## What You'll Do

- Work closely with bench scientists to understand experimental goals and turn them into concrete hardware and workflow requirements.
- Evaluate, select, and configure lab instrumentation and hardware to support new and existing materials R&D workflows.
- Design experimental and automation workflows that hold up to the realities of materials synthesis and characterization.
- Serve as the technical bridge between scientists and the automation/software engineering team, making sure integration specs reflect how the science actually works.
- Troubleshoot instrument and workflow issues that require materials domain knowledge to diagnose.
- Collaborate with AI and data scientists to help shape how experimental data is structured and used for analysis and planning.

You Will Thrive in This Role If You Have

- PhD in Materials Science, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent research experience).
- Strong working knowledge of common materials lab hardware (e.g. furnaces, fluid/gas handling manifolds, characterization tools, synthesis equipment) and the workflows built around them.
- Ability to communicate fluently with both scientists and engineers, and to translate scientific intent into clear technical requirements.
- Comfort writing Python to interact with instruments, manipulate experimental data, and prototype automation workflows

Especially Strong Candidates May Also Have

- Prior experience working alongside automation or software engineers.
- Experience with electronic lab notebooks, LIMS, or other lab data systems.
- A track record of designing or adapting experimental protocols for higher-throughput or automated execution.

Mechanics

- Minimum education: PhD or equivalent combination of education and hands-on research experience
- Location: Menlo Park, CA (Soon: San Francisco, too)
- Compensation: $200,000-$250,000 + equity
- Visa sponsorship: Yes, we sponsor visas.

## About Periodic Labs

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Periodic Labs is building AI scientists and autonomous laboratories to accelerate scientific discovery in the physical sciences, starting with materials design and semiconductor research.
- **Entity Type**: Private (seed-stage, $300M total funding raised in 2025)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA (primary) and Menlo Park, California, USA (dual locations) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/periodic-labs), [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/periodic-labs)
- **Founded**: 2025 [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/periodic-labs)
- **Founders**: Ekin Dogus Cubuk (Co-Founder) and other undisclosed founding team members with backgrounds at OpenAI, DeepMind, and Google [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/periodic-labs), [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Physical sciences R&D, artificial intelligence, autonomous laboratory systems
- **Target customers**: B2B – enterprises in semiconductor manufacturing, materials science, energy, and other deep-tech sectors requiring experimental research
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Our goal is to create an AI scientist” that can autonomously hypothesize, run experiments, and learn from results to discover new materials and accelerate technological progress [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)

## Products & Services
- **AI Scientist**: A suite of AI models trained to generate hypotheses, design experiments, and interpret results across physical science domains.
- **Autonomous Laboratories**: Fully automated, high-throughput experimental platforms that produce large volumes of high-quality data (including negative results) to train AI models. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)
- **Custom Agents for Industry**: Tailored AI agents for engineers and researchers, e.g., helping a semiconductor manufacturer analyze heat dissipation data to accelerate iteration. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private seed-stage company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised – $300M in a single seed round (2025) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/periodic-labs)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: a16z, Felicis, DST, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture arm), Accel, Emerson Collective, Fellows Fund, Coatue; individual backers include Jeff Bezos, Elad Gil, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Dean. Also collaborating with academic advisors from Stanford, Northwestern, and more. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/), [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/periodic-labs)
- **Growth Signals**: 40 employees as of mid-2026, with monthly headcount growth of +19.6% and 25 active job postings (+47.1% quarterly growth) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/periodic-labs)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proprietary data generation**: Autonomous labs produce massive, unique datasets (including valuable negative results) that do not exist in public literature, creating a data moat.
- **Founding team pedigree**: Core team co-created ChatGPT, DeepMind’s GNoME, OpenAI’s Operator (Agent), MatterGen, and scaled autonomous physics labs – rare concentration of AI + science talent. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)
- **End-to-end integration**: AI models, simulation, and physical experimentation are all in-house, enabling rapid closed-loop learning.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale autonomous labs**: Expand capacity to generate experimental data across multiple physical science domains.
- **Target high-impact problems**: Superconductor discovery, semiconductor heat dissipation, and other materials challenges that can unlock Moore’s Law, advanced energy grids, and space travel. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)
- **Develop the first generation of AI scientists**: Train models that can operate independently of human input across the entire scientific method.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “From bits to atoms” – a deep-tech startup blending frontier AI with hands-on lab work. Emphasis on rapid iteration and real-world impact.
- **Work policy**: In-office preferred; primary offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco, CA. Most roles are on-site. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/periodic-labs)
- **Notable perks**: Work alongside world-class AI researchers and experimental scientists; access to cutting-edge automated lab equipment; early-stage equity and high-growth trajectory.
- **Engineering culture**: 34% of employees are in technical roles; talent sourced from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, xAI, and Stanford – strong peer learning environment. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/periodic-labs)

## Sources
1. [periodic.com](https://periodic.com/)
2. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/periodic-labs)
3. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/periodic-labs)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/periodic-labs)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/periodic-labs](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/periodic-labs)

## Other roles at Periodic Labs

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- [Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-recruiter-periodic-labs-menlo-park-04dyj1a17h1w) — Menlo Park, CA
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