Full-Time
Automation Engineer 2
BigHat Biosciences
51-200 employees
ML-guided antibody discovery and engineering
No salary listed
San Mateo, CA, USA
In Person
Onsite presence is required.
 Biology & Biotech (1) |
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- The candidate must have at least 3 years of relevant lab automation or liquid-handling industry experience.
- The candidate must have hands-on experience developing liquid-handler methods using platforms such as Hamilton Venus, Tecan FluentControl, Beckman Biomek, Agilent VWorks, Analytik Jena Composer, or similar.
- The candidate must have hands-on experience troubleshooting and maintaining liquid handlers and supporting automation users in the laboratory.
- The candidate must have experience partnering with scientific and production teams to scope, build, and onboard automated workflows.
- The candidate must have working knowledge of experimental design, process documentation, and data analysis.
- The candidate must have strong communication skills and be able to work across protein scientists, research associates, data scientists, and software engineers.
- The candidate must be willing to work onsite because the role requires hands-on instrument work and in-lab support.
- Own automation projects end-to-end by leading the design, build, validation, and deployment of new automated workflows from requirements through production release.
- Partner with scientific and production teams to scope projects, translate assay needs into robust automated workflows, and onboard them into routine use.
- Maintain and troubleshoot instruments and automated methods, and support laboratory users to keep the platform running and operators unblocked.
- Document automation procedures and standard operating procedures, support knowledge transfer, and contribute to the automation team's collective know-how.
- Collaborate with software engineering teams on end-to-end integrated workflows that leverage BigHat's software stack.
- Hands-on experience with Hamilton STAR or Vantage is strongly preferred.
- Experience automating high-throughput protein production and characterization workflows is a strong plus but is not required.
- Comfort working in a fluid, dynamic startup environment.
- A genuine drive to contribute and curiosity to keep learning and take on unfamiliar problems, adding value through fresh problem solving, complementary expertise, or new tools and practices.
BigHat Biosciences designs and develops antibody therapies by combining machine learning with synthetic biology. Its Milliner platform integrates a wet-lab workflow with AI to discover, engineer, and fully characterize hundreds of recombinant antibodies each week, enabling rapid development of safer and more effective treatments for hard-to-treat diseases such as certain infections and cancers. Unlike traditional antibody discovery, Milliner provides end-to-end screening, purification, and characterization in a high-throughput, weekly workflow, speeding up the path from concept to candidate. The company differentiates itself through its integrated platform that couples ML-driven design with synthetic biology experimentation, a focus on challenging diseases, and a culture that emphasizes work-life balance. Its goal is to deliver faster, safer antibody therapies to patients by expanding access to rapid discovery and engineering capabilities for healthcare providers and patients alike.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series B
Total Funding
$99.3M
Headquarters
San Carlos, California
Founded
2019
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- April 2025's $124.1 million Series B funds BHB810 and BHB299 development.
- September 1, 2026 first-patient dosing validates BigHat's AI-to-clinic execution.
- Merck milestone payments and Lilly TuneLab work create non-dilutive revenue and validation.
What critics are saying
- BHB810 is BigHat's first human test; any safety signal can stall the platform.
- BHB299 waits until 2027, leaving the company dependent on one early ADC.
- If BHB810 underperforms against CDH17 competitors, BigHat loses partner leverage and investor confidence.
What makes BigHat Biosciences unique
- Milliner pairs autonomous wet labs with AI, and BHB810 reached clinic in 2026.
- Peyton Greenside leads; Stefan Weigand joined June 2026 from Roche's biologics engine.
- Merck completed three projects and Lilly expanded BigHat collaborations in January 2026.
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Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↓ -2%1 year growth
↓ -5%2 year growth
↓ -1%BigHat Biosciences has dosed the first patient in a Phase 1 clinical trial of BHB810, a novel antibody-drug conjugate targeting gastric cancer and advanced gastrointestinal tumours. The AI-designed therapy targets Cadherin-17 and represents the company's first programme to advance from AI-generated design into human studies. The dose escalation trial will evaluate safety, tolerability, and preliminary antitumor activity in patients with advanced gastric and gastroesophageal tumours. In preclinical studies across nearly 30 tumour models, BHB810 achieved complete or near-complete tumour clearance, including in cancers with low CDH17 expression. BigHat is also developing BHB299, a solid tumour treatment expected to enter clinical trials in 2027. The San Mateo-based company maintains active collaborations with Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and Eli Lilly.
BigHat Biosciences announces first patient dosed in Phase 1 trial evaluating BHB810, a novel cdh17-directed antibody-drug conjugate, for the treatment of gastric cancer and other advanced gastrointestinal tumors. BHB810, the first clinical program from BigHat's AI discovery platform, showed complete or near-complete tumor clearance and a favorable safety profile in preclinical studies SAN MATEO, CALIFORNIA - September 1, 2026: BigHat Biosciences, a clinical-stage, AI-driven protein therapeutics platform company, today announced that the first patient has been dosed in its Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating BHB810, a novel, potentially best-in-class Cadherin-17 (CDH17)-directed VHH-Fc antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) for the treatment of gastric cancer and other advanced gastrointestinal (GI) malignancies. BHB810 was engineered using BigHat's AI-powered antibody design platform to combine potent antitumor activity against CDH17-expressing tumors with a differentiated safety profile and favorable manufacturability. "The treatment of the first patient with BHB810 marks an important step forward in our mission to enable transformative AI-designed therapeutics and comes during a period of steady momentum for BigHat, as we continue to advance both our pipeline of novel therapeutics and AI platform," said Peyton Greenside, co-founder and CEO of BigHat. "This is the first program we've taken from AI-generated design into human studies, validating the ability of our platform to identify and develop promising antibodies into clinic-ready therapeutics. BHB810 could offer a differentiated approach to address a target that has been difficult to drug well, and we are excited by the potential to offer a much-needed new treatment option for patients living with GI cancers." The first-in-human, Phase 1 dose escalation trial will evaluate the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and preliminary antitumor activity of BHB810. The trial will initially enroll patients with advanced gastric and gastroesophageal (GEJ) tumors. "Despite recent advances, patients with advanced gastric cancers and other GI malignancies continue to face substantial unmet medical needs," said Principal Investigator Alexander Spira, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer of NEXT Oncology-Virginia and Co-Director of the Virginia Cancer Specialists Research Institute. "We are excited to help advance BHB810, a potentially best-in-class CDH17-targeted antibody-drug conjugate developed using BigHat's AI-driven antibody engineering platform, as a potential new treatment option for patients." Across a preclinical program spanning nearly 30 patient- and cell-derived tumor models, including gastric cancers with low and heterogeneous CDH17 expression, BHB810 drove complete or near-complete tumor clearance. Its compact antibody format and highly stable payload technology also translated into a favorable safety profile in preclinical studies. Beyond BHB810, BigHat is developing a portfolio of investigational therapeutics. BHB299, an avidity-driven TCE targeting CEACAM6 for the treatment of solid tumors, is expected to enter the clinic in 2027. BigHat has also successfully designed multiple antibody therapeutics with leading pharmaceutical companies, including Merck and Johnson & Johnson, in addition to multiple active collaborations, including one with Eli Lilly to design antibodies with enhanced functionality to benefit patients with chronic disease. About BigHat Biosciences BigHat Biosciences is an AI-native biotechnology company designing and developing next-generation protein therapeutics. BigHat's proprietary platform integrates frontier AI with autonomous, high-throughput experimentation to generate gold-standard biological data at scale, creating a continuous learning loop between molecular design and experimental validation. This integrated approach enables BigHat to rapidly design, optimize and advance differentiated therapeutics with the properties needed for clinical development. By combining leading technology with deep therapeutic development expertise, BigHat is working to translate advances in AI and biology into transformative medicines for patients. BigHat is headquartered in San Mateo, CA. Learn more at www.bighatbio.com and follow BigHat Bio on LinkedIn. Media Contact Mimi Shilling [email protected]
BigHat successfully completed three project collaborations with Merck. BigHat successfully completed three project collaborations with Merck, triggering an undisclosed milestone payment. BigHat leveraged its integrated machine learning and high-speed wet lab to design and develop high-quality antibody candidates across diverse modalities, therapeutic areas (e.g., oncology, immunology), and protein engineering challenges. Merck is continuing evaluation of the BigHat sequences which could unlock additional downstream milestone payments as the programs advance toward patients. *Merck Global Health Innovation Fund is also an investor in BigHat Biosciences. Navigation
BigHat Biosciences has appointed Stefan Weigand as Chief Scientific Officer. Weigand joins from Roche, where he led Large Molecule Research, overseeing approximately 350 scientists and the company's biologics pipeline from discovery through Phase I. At Roche, Weigand doubled the biologics research organisation's output to five to six molecules entering first-in-human trials annually. His team established therapeutic platforms including BrainShuttle and CrossMab, enabling over 60 molecules to advance into clinical development. At BigHat, Weigand will lead scientific strategy across the company's AI-driven drug design platform, which combines generative protein design with high-throughput experimental cycles. The platform uses Bayesian optimisation and reinforcement learning to engineer antibodies and complex protein therapeutics.
BigHat Biosciences raised $124 million in Series B funding led by S32 on April 28, 2025, with a pre-money valuation of $180 million. Participants included Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Quadrille Capital, Gaingels, GRIDS Capital, Axial, Quain Investments, Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, AME Cloud Ventures, and Kevin Moore.