I joined Dash Bio in March 2026 as an Associate Software Engineer. This milestone marked the culmination of my years-long career transition from scientist to engineer. Before that, I spent eight years in the lab trying my hardest to automate as much of my experiments as I could. I moved manual workflows onto liquid handlers, scaled up sample preparation, and wrote some basic code to analyze the massive amounts of data I collected. Eventually, I realized I wanted to build those systems myself full-time instead of just moonlighting as an automation engineer, so I earned a master’s in computer science. Dash was a natural next step because here, lab automation is the product. Now I can bring my scientist-engineer hybrid approach to deliver software solutions that scientists and automation engineers actually want.
Dash is building an integrated robotic science platform to speed up drug development. Much of the platform supports regulated lab work, so it’s built to the standards expected of GxP computerized systems. Requirements, testing, access control, and audit trails are part of designing a feature from the start. As a scientist, I learned to question results and design controls before trusting them. As an engineer, I learned to assume things will break and plan for it. Good lab automation software needs both.
The work happens in the lab as much as in the code. I work side-by-side with scientists, guiding them through designing experiments on the platform. I also work closely with automation engineers to configure protocols and get them running on the instruments. Many of the features I build start from those conversations.
Turning a method written for a person into one a robot can run reliably is harder than it sounds, and it’s that exact kind of difficult problem that I enjoy working on the most.
Technology Stack
Frontend
- React with Mantine component library
- Apollo Client for GraphQL data fetching
- Storybook for component development and documentation
Backend
- GraphQL API layer
- Drizzle ORM with PostgreSQL
- Serverless AWS Lambda functions
Infrastructure & DevOps
- Pulumi and Terraform for infrastructure as code
- Docker containers for local development
Testing
- Vitest for unit and integration testing
- Playwright for end-to-end testing
Tools
- VS Code with GitHub Copilot
- Postman for API exploration
- Datadog for log monitoring and observability