Lab Technician, Molecular Biology

Harmattan AI

ABOUT US Harmattan AI is a next-generation defense prime building autonomous and scalable defense systems. Following the close of a $200M Series B, valuing the company at $1.4 billion, we are expanding our teams and capabilities to deliver mission-critical systems to allied forces. Our work is guided by clear values: building technologies with real-world impact, pursuing excellence in everything we do, setting ambitious goals, and taking on the hardest technical challenges. We operate in a demanding environment where rigor, ownership, and execution are expected. About the Role We are seeking an Electronics Technician to join our Lausanne Engineering Hub. In this high-priority role, you will enter a scaling environment dedicated to developing autonomous drone platforms across air defense, ISR, strike, and electronic warfare. Your primary mission will be to own the full hardware validation lifecycle—from Altium component creation and PCB review to bench measurement, system validation, and drone assembly. You will play an essential role in maintaining the quality and reliability of our deployed hardware at an increasing pace of iteration. Responsibilities * Altium Library Management: Maintain and expand the Altium Designer component library, including symbol creation, footprint design, and 3D model integration. * PCB Review & Bring-Up: Support PCB design reviews and perform hands-on bring-up and validation of new board revisions. * Testing & Measurement: Conduct electrical measurements and functional tests using standard lab instruments, such as oscilloscopes, multimeters, and power analyzers. * Drone Assembly & Integration: Assemble and integrate electronics into drone platforms, executing everything from precision soldering to full system checkout. * Technical Documentation: Write clear, structured technical validation and test reports for each hardware iteration. * Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner daily with the Hardware Engineering team, and collaborate with Systems Engineering, Firmware/Software, and Procurement teams. * Mentorship: Provide guidance and mentorship to junior technicians or interns as the team scales over time. Candidate Requirements * Educational Background: A Technician ES (Electronics or Electrical Engineering), HEIG (Haute École d'Ingénierie et de Gestion), or an equivalent Swiss/European technical college diploma. A practical, hands-on engineering background is highly preferred. * Proven Technical Skills: Strong proficiency in Altium Designer (schematic capture, library management) and bench diagnostics. You are proficient in precision soldering, including micro-components (0201, 0402…) and advanced surface-mount packages (QFN, BGA…). * Industry Experience: 2–3 years of practical experience as an electronics technician , ideally coming from drone/UAV manufacturers, avionics, defense contractors, or aerospace firms. Experience assembling electromechanical platforms and writing structured technical test reports is required. * Adaptability & Autonomy: Highly rigorous, precise, and autonomous. You take full ownership of your deliverables and thrive when working directly on hardware that matters. * Legal Requirements: A valid Swiss work permit or EU/EFTA citizenship is required. We look forward to hearing how you can help shape the future of autonomous defense systems at Harmattan AI.

Adaptyv Bio

Adaptyv is building an automated lab that lets AI agents run biology experiments. We're entering the era of agentic science where AI models can now design novel proteins, propose hypotheses, and iterate on experimental results. But they can't run the experiments themselves - that's still a manual, months-long process. We're building the infrastructure that gives AI agents access to the physical world. We are one of the fastest growing biotech companies, trusted by leading biopharmas, frontier AI labs, and the techbio companies pushing the field forward. This is a rare chance to help advance some of the most important work happening in biotech today. Our automated lab is powered by a deep software + hardware stack: lab instruments worth millions of USD reverse-engineered into API-controllable hardware, dozens of devices orchestrated through complex workflows, full observability on everything that happens in the lab, processing pipelines for messy physical-world data, and AI systems that troubleshoot production results and accelerate assay development. We’re growing rapidly and are hiring for talented people to scale and support the massive demand for AI-driven wet lab experimentation. ABOUT THE ROLE Behind the API and the AI agents there is a real, physical lab in Lausanne: millions of francs of instruments, freezers full of reagents, deliveries arriving every day, and customer samples going out. When it runs smoothly, a customer gets their results in days. When it does not — a reagent runs out mid-run, a delivery sits unopened, an instrument goes down and nobody noticed the service contract lapsed — experiments stop, and customers feel it immediately. You are the person who makes sure that does not happen. What is on the shelves, what is on order, what is shipping, and what is about to break — that is yours, and you will run it. This is a hands-on, in-the-lab role, working closely with our Lab Manager and with the scientists whose experiments depend on you getting it right. This is a good role to be early in your career in. We are going from roughly 25 people to roughly 50 in the next year and multiplying the throughput of the lab, and the person who does this job well will not be doing the same job in two years. We are looking for someone who fixes things rather than reporting them. WHAT YOU'LL DO * Keep the lab stocked. Receive deliveries, unpack them, get them into the right freezer at the right temperature, and make sure our inventory system reflects what is actually on the shelf. Flag what is running low before anyone else notices. * Run the day-to-day ordering. Place the orders, chase the ones that are late, and sort out the ones that arrive wrong. * Handle shipping, in and out. Customer samples, reagents, equipment. Cold chain, dry ice, customs paperwork, and the courier relationships that make it all land on time. * Support the science team hands-on. Reconstituting and aliquoting target proteins, buffer prep, plate handling, and tracking materials in our lab software. You will be at the bench for part of your week. * Look after the instruments. Coordinate servicing, calibration, and repairs with vendors, keep the maintenance schedule honest, and get an engineer on site fast when something breaks. * Keep the lab safe and organized. Chemical inventory, waste disposal, safety compliance, and the general war against entropy in a shared space. * Keep the office and the team running. Supplies, workspace, new-starter setups, and the occasional team event. * Help build the new lab. We are expanding into new space. You will be involved in setting it up. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR * Some hands-on lab experience. A degree, an apprenticeship, a technician role, or a couple of years in a research or biotech lab. We care much more about whether you are competent and reliable in a lab than about how many years you have logged. * Genuinely organized. You are tracking dozens of small things at once — what is on order, what expires next month, which instrument is due for service — and none of them drop. * You notice things before they break. The best people in this role are the ones who spot that we are three weeks from running out of a reagent, and quietly fix it, rather than the ones who report the stockout. * You are comfortable getting your hands dirty. This is not an administrative job. You will be unpacking boxes, moving dry ice, and reorganizing a freezer that has become someone's junk drawer. * You are tech-savvy, and you want to be more so. Our lab runs on our own software and we use AI tooling across the company, including for operational work. We would love someone who ends up automating the boring parts of their own job rather than doing them forever, and we will teach you how. Curiosity here counts for more than existing skill. * You want to be in a startup. Priorities move, nothing is fully documented yet, and you will regularly be the first person to do something. If you need a defined process to work inside, this will be uncomfortable. * You care about the mission. We are trying to make biology fast and cheap enough that AI can actually do it. * Based in Lausanne, or willing to relocate. This role is on-site, daily, by definition. * French and English both useful — many of our suppliers and couriers operate in French. SCOPE Nobody here has clean edges around their job. You will be in the lab, in the office, on the phone with a courier, and every so often doing something that is nobody's job simply because it needs doing. The centre of gravity is the lab. Office and team logistics come with it, but the lab is the point. You will be around the science constantly without designing the experiments, and you will have real influence over which vendors we use — you are the one who sees what works and what keeps arriving late — without running the negotiations yourself. WHY THIS ROLE IS INTERESTING Most lab operations jobs are in labs where nothing much changes. This one is inside an automated lab that is being rebuilt and scaled up while it runs, at a company used by the best pharma companies and the best AI labs in the world. You will learn how a real high-throughput protein pipeline works from the inside, in a company small enough that you will see the effect of your work the same week you do it. And if you turn out to be excellent, there is a lot of room above you: this team is going to be much bigger in two years than it is today. Application deadline We are reviewing applicants on a rolling basis.

Adaptyv Bio

Adaptyv is building an automated lab that lets AI agents run biology experiments. We're entering the era of agentic science where AI models can now design novel proteins, propose hypotheses, and iterate on experimental results. But they can't run the experiments themselves - that's still a manual, months-long process. We're building the infrastructure that gives AI agents access to the physical world. We are one of the fastest growing biotech companies, trusted by leading biopharmas, frontier AI labs, and the techbio companies pushing the field forward. This is a rare chance to help advance some of the most important work happening in biotech today. Our automated lab is powered by a deep software + hardware stack: lab instruments worth millions of USD reverse-engineered into API-controllable hardware, dozens of devices orchestrated through complex workflows, full observability on everything that happens in the lab, processing pipelines for messy physical-world data, and AI systems that troubleshoot production results and accelerate assay development. We’re growing rapidly and are hiring for talented people to scale and support the massive demand for AI-driven wet lab experimentation. ABOUT THE ROLE We are going from roughly 25 people to roughly 50 in the next twelve months. We have close to 30 roles open right now, across protein scientists, lab automation engineers, backend and product engineers, ML people, and commercial. Hiring is currently run by the founders, on top of everything else the founders do. That is the single biggest thing standing between us and the company we're trying to build. This is the hire that fixes it, and we want to aim high with it. Not a recruiter who works a req list. Someone who owns talent as a function: what we hire for, how we assess it, how we pitch it, who does the recruiting, and what the org actually looks like on the other side of doubling. The hard part of this job is that our roles don't sit in one talent pool. In the same week you might be trying to find a protein biochemist who can read a sensorgram, an engineer who can make a liquid handler behave, and a backend engineer who has never touched biology. Those people read different signals, hang out in different places, and are sold with different pitches. You have to be able to hold all of that at once, and know which one you're talking to. We would love someone who can speak both languages well enough to spot exceptional people themselves. You don't need a PhD and you don't need to ship code. You do need enough real understanding of what our scientists and engineers actually do that you can tell the difference between someone who sounds impressive and someone who is. This is a Lausanne role. Most of the company is here, most of the people you'll hire will be here, and the job is much easier when you can walk over to a hiring manager and argue about a candidate in person. WHAT YOU'LL DO * Own hiring end to end. Define what we're hiring for with the team, write and post the roles, build the pipeline, run the process, and close people. * Build the recruiting team. As we scale, you'll hire and manage specialist recruiters, most likely a technical recruiter first. You'll be a player-coach for a long time before you're purely a manager. * Own the inbound pipeline. We get a lot of applicants and a real share of them are strong. Right now good people can get lost in the pile. Making that never happen is one of the most valuable things you can do here. * Run our work trials. A lot of our best hires come through paid work trials rather than interview loops. Scheduling them, matching them to the right people internally, and making them a great experience for the candidate is core to the job. * Make the pitch. You'll often be the first human a candidate talks to. You're selling the mission, and you should genuinely believe it. * Own Ashby and push it further. Our ATS is already wired into AI tooling: automated candidate scoring, assisted review, templated and scheduled candidate comms. You'll inherit that and be expected to make it better, not merely operate it. * Work with hiring managers across biology, software, automation, and commercial. Different teams, different bars, different definitions of good. You'll help each of them get sharper about what they actually need. * Build the parts of the org that hiring touches: leveling, compensation bands, interview structure, onboarding, and how we make offers. Fast and light, not corporate. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR * You've hired technical people at real depth, for several years, in a high-growth environment. You've owned searches that mattered and closed people who had other options. * You can talk to scientists and to engineers. You understand enough biology and enough software or lab automation to run a credible conversation, ask a sharp follow-up, and form your own view of someone's quality. This is the thing we care most about and the thing most recruiters cannot do. * You are not a mercenary. We are not looking for someone optimizing for placements or fee cycles. We want someone who cares about what we're building, who wants the company to be excellent in ten years, and who treats every hire as a long-term bet rather than a filled seat. * You use AI tools seriously. We run on Claude Code and similar tooling across the company, including in hiring. The best version of this person is automating their own pipeline, writing their own scripts against Ashby, and finding leverage the rest of us haven't thought of. If your instinct is that recruiting is purely a human craft that shouldn't be automated, we'll frustrate each other. * Self-starter, high autonomy. Nobody will hand you a prioritized req list. You'll figure out what's most broken, fix it, and tell us what you did. * Fast learner. You'll be dropped into unfamiliar technical domains constantly and expected to get to a useful level of understanding quickly. * Startup speed, not corporate process. Good candidates disappear in days. We'd rather move fast and occasionally be wrong than run a beautiful process that loses people. * Good taste in people, and the confidence to hold a bar. Part of this job is telling a founder that the person they liked isn't good enough. * Bonus: experience with the Swiss labor market, hiring in European biotech or deep tech, or building a talent function from nothing. WHAT THIS ROLE IS NOT * Not a coordinator role. You'll do scheduling when it needs doing, but if that's what you want to do all day, this will bore you. * Not a pure people or HR generalist role. Payroll, benefits, and Swiss employment admin exist and are mostly handled. Talent is the job. * Not an agency-style seat. You're not filling reqs handed down to you. You're deciding, with the founders, what we should be hiring for at all. WHY THIS ROLE IS INTERESTING Most talent leaders inherit a hiring machine and tune it. You'd be building one, at a company that is unusual enough to be genuinely fun to pitch: an automated lab that AI agents can run experiments in, used by the best pharma companies and the best AI labs in the world. The people you hire over the next two years will decide whether that works. There are not many jobs where the leverage is that direct. Application deadline We are reviewing applicants on a rolling basis.