Automation Scientist in Glasgow

About Chemify

Chemify is revolutionising chemistry. We are creating a future where the synthesis of previously unimaginable molecules, drugs, and materials is instantly accessible. By combining AI, robotics, and the world’s largest continually expanding database of chemical programs, we are accelerating chemical discovery to improve quality of life and extend the reach of humanity. Our Chemifarm facility in Glasgow operates a growing fleet of advanced robotic systems that automate synthesis, optimisation, and library generation. This gives our computational scientists something rare: a direct, high-throughput bridge from in silico design to physically synthesised molecules, closing the design–make–test loop at a pace conventional drug discovery organisations cannot match.

Location: Glasgow, UK (on-site)
Travel: Minimal

The Role

We are seeking an Automation Scientist to sit at the intersection of chemistry, engineering, and testing — translating real chemistry onto our robotic synthesis platform and making sure it works. You will take synthetic routes and turn them into automated protocols, run and validate them on our robotic systems, diagnose issues that span chemistry, hardware, firmware, and software, and feed what you learn back to the engineering teams building the platform. What sets this role apart is the hybrid: you will need a chemist’s judgement, an engineer’s instinct for how the machines work, and a tester’s rigour — all on a platform where code becomes molecules. If working across chemistry, engineering, and testing on a real-world robotic platform sounds like the right shape of job for you, we’d love to welcome you to our team.

Key Responsibilities

• Translate synthetic chemistry into automated protocols that run on our robotic platform.
• Run, validate, and troubleshoot syntheses end to end, diagnosing issues across chemistry, hardware, firmware, and software.
• Act as the bridge between the chemistry and engineering teams, turning lab reality into clear, actionable feedback.
• Define and run test protocols and acceptance criteria that prove the platform performs against real chemistry.
• Help characterise and improve platform capability, reliability, and reproducibility.
• Contribute to protocols, documentation, and the standards that make automated chemistry repeatable.

About You

You are a scientist who likes machines — as comfortable reasoning about a reaction as about the robot running it. You enjoy being the person who works out why something did not behave, whether the cause is chemistry, hardware, or code, and you communicate clearly across disciplines.

We expect you to bring:

• A degree in chemistry or a related science (PhD or equivalent hands-on experience welcome), with real synthetic / wet-lab experience.
• A strong practical bent and genuine interest in automation, robotics, and how the underlying systems work.
• Experience running, validating, and troubleshooting experiments rigorously and reproducibly.
• The ability to work across chemistry, engineering, and software teams and translate between them.
• Careful, methodical working and clear record-keeping.

Beneficial Skills

• Experience with automated or high-throughput synthesis / lab systems.
• Familiarity with analytical techniques (e.g. HPLC, LC-MS, NMR) for validating outcomes.
• Some scripting ([Python]) for protocols, data handling, or analysis.
• Exposure to flow chemistry, process chemistry, or lab-automation hardware.
• An understanding of how software and hardware combine to run an experiment.

Why Join Chemify?

• Impact. You are where chemistry meets the machine — your work is what turns our platform’s capability into real, reproducible synthesis.
• Autonomy. You will own the translation of chemistry onto the platform and the testing that proves it works, with real influence over how we make automated chemistry reliable.
• Ambition. We are a Series B deep-tech company at the frontier of chemistry, robotics, and AI — a chance to work across chemistry, engineering, and automation on systems no one else has.