Ark Biotech is powering the most important infrastructure buildout of this generation to transform how people consume protein. Ark is a B2B company engineering and designing next-generation production systems for the cultivated meat industry. We are a venture-backed startup driven by a desire to create a better food system for the planet and its inhabitants. At Ark, you will have the opportunity to solve difficult problems that matter and apply cutting-edge engineering and science in an environment that rewards creativity and visionary approaches.
Let's build a better food system together, one line of code at a time!
Ark's Data Systems team is hiring a software engineer to build out and own our system integration platform: the software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop simulation test infrastructure used to validate the functionality and reliability of our systems and the interfaces between them. These test systems will be an integral part of our continuous integration and release development processes, maintaining the safety and reliability of our bioreactors while enabling fast-paced iteration on our control strategies and hardware revisions.
About the role
As the second Data Systems hire, you’ll get the opportunity to wear many hats while helping set the technical and cultural direction of our nascent team. For now, we’re responsible for our own infrastructure, developer experience, on-call schedule, release management, UI/UX, and so on, so you’ll get plenty of chances to learn on the job. That said, your main responsibility will be building and maintaining the software- and hardware-in-the-loop simulation test systems we’ll be using to develop and validate the various software and hardware systems that make up a functioning bioreactor in our ecosystem. A typical day might include:
● working with our automation team to setup a new hardware test system, e.g. a PLC along with a local development server, perhaps connected to some stand-in sensors/actuators
● configuring a variety of containerized services to spin up with each test run
● scripting test sequences and data validation
● setting up continuous integration with Github Actions self-hosted runners
● cleaning up the interface between our simulation tools and software ecosystem
About the team
The Data Systems team is responsible for everything from production, model-based control software to web-based data monitoring applications. We’re building both the software to operate our intelligent bioreactors and the data infrastructure to learn from, improve on, and automate them. Instead of centralizing analysts and ML engineers on one team, we’ve distributed data science skills across the company, putting a powerful data platform in the hands of our subject-matter experts. With such a broad mandate, we get to collaborate with Ark's larger technical team of process scientists and automation engineers, enabling their innovation through a combination of reliable software and fast-paced iteration.
About the location
We’ve thought carefully about this role’s location and determined that on-site will most set you up for success. As the engineer responsible for setting up and maintaining hardware-in-the-loop simulation test systems, you’ll have a physical hardware component that can’t be supported remotely. More generally, we’re a small enough company that we’re able to all work together in a single shared office. This has tremendous value for everything from our pace of innovation to our ability to collaborate and learn from each other, which is essential for a company like ours that is inherently interdisciplinary. That said, we’ll certainly be taking advantage of remote work in the future as the team grows, but for now with this role, we’re focused on hiring in-person at our office in downtown Cambridge.
What you'll get out of your time at Ark
● Daily experience working side by side with a team of hard-working, passionate, caring scientists and engineers
● Continuous feedback from a manager dedicated to developing your professional skillset and supporting your career
● Opportunities to ship production software to real customers in an agile development environment
● Tangible impact in accelerating the cultivated meat industry
● Equity, healthcare, vision, dental, 401k matching, flexible holiday and vacation time, relocation assistance, a brand-new downtown office (cold brew on tap, but no ping pong table quite yet)
Must haves
● Minimum 2 years of experience in software development
● Exposure to integration testing involving a hardware component
● Experience implementing continuous integration/deployment best practices
● Fluency in Python
● Familiarity with building high-reliability, mission-critical software systems
Helpful (but not required) experience
● Agile development best practices
● Container tools like Docker and Docker Compose
● Cloud computing services, e.g. AWS or GCP
● Industrial automation software tools, e.g. Codesys, Ignition, MQTT, Sparkplug B, OPC UA
● Software services architecture and related tools, e.g. Apache Kafka
● Deployment infrastructure, e.g. Ansible or Terraform
