Research Support Engineer

Salt Lake City, UT    ·    Full time

Does providing solutions for researchers’ needs motivate you? Are you excited by the idea of using neurotechnology to develop new therapies for people suffering from disease and disability?

Do you like learning about research being conducted in the electrophysiology space? When someone is telling you about their research, are you asking them question after question about what signals they are recording and what model they are using? No head nods and purposeless “mhm”s from you… you’re too busy nerding out!

Do you consider yourself to have great problem-solving skills? Not just the person who says it, but the person who truly lives it. You know… the friend who fixes everything themselves instead of calling the repair worker.

Do you have a history of stepping up in your role to bring about positive change? Have you successfully overcome an obstacle by pursuing a unique approach that led to a great outcome? Do you work well with people from a variety of career backgrounds? Do the words ‘implantable neurotech’ and ‘data acquisition’ get you excited?

If you said “yes” to these questions, we need you. We currently have hundreds of customers in academia, industry, and abroad who require help configuring, debugging, and programming their Ripple hardware to conduct groundbreaking neuroscience research. We need a passionate, high-energy, hardworking engineer with excellent interpersonal skills to help those customers (and to support our awesome sales team too!)

To be successful in this job, you will need to be comfortable having an opinion, and you will need to be able to communicate your opinion in a collaborative way. You will also need to be comfortable wearing many hats – from programming to system debugging, to prototyping, and running experiments. You will also get to work directly with our support, sales, and engineering teams.

This is a full-time, exempt position, starting as soon as possible virtually at our Salt Lake City office. The position would need to move to Salt Lake City to work on-site within the first 3 months of virtual work. This position reports to our Support Manager and Marketing Coordinator, Landan Mintch.

About this Position

Here is what you’ll do as a Research Support Engineer:

• Communicate with customers about their experimental setups and provide insightful questions to figure out the root cause of issues.
• Debug experimental setups from electrical grounding to hardware/software configurations and more.
• Adequately convey your thoughts/ideas via various communication mediums (email, phone, video chat, in-person, etc.)
• Interpret, describe, and design the basic pinout interfaces between input and output devices.
• Analyze high channel-count, large duration, time-synchronized electrophysiological data signals (EEG, ECoG, LFP, Multi-Unit Activity, etc.)
• Change projects/priorities on a whim. Each week brings new problems and thus, new solutions! You must be adaptable and able to balance multiple tasks with various moving parts.
• Work closely with our FANTASTIC sales team in providing customer information and/or demo assistance.
• Aid in Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) process for products in the field.
• Collaborate with engineering, manufacturing, and regulatory to help with our sales efforts, prototyping/debugging, and pipeline management.
• Test new device iterations and software updates.
• Travel (up to 30%) to labs worldwide to install their newly purchased systems or address technical issues.
• Provide training to customers globally both remotely and on-site on the use of our hardware and software products.
• Enjoy solving difficult (yet fulfilling) problems.
• Required: Deep reserves of grit and optimism. We need someone who doesn’t get defeated easily and steps up to challenge after challenge with a positive outlook.
• Genuinely care. At Ripple, we care deeply about each other and treat each other with respect, kindness, and patience. We care about the products we create and demand the best of ourselves.

Here’s the skillset we would like you to have to be able to do this job:

• Required: A BS or MS in bioengineering, biomedical engineering, computer science, neuroscience, or related technical field.
• Required: Experience with multi-channel electrophysiology systems.
• Required: 2+ years of programming in MATLAB, Python, or similar languages.
• Required: 1+ years’ experience debugging electrophysiology systems (commercial or custom).
• Required: Exceptional interpersonal skills including the ability to communicate with professionals of varying backgrounds (doctors, scientists, clinicians, and engineers).
• Bonus: Signal processing and/or machine learning experience (looking at frequency spectrum, coherence, spike sorting, using PCA, etc.)
• Bonus: Experience with EEG acquisition and analysis.
• Bonus: PhD in bioengineering, biomedical engineering, computer science, neuroscience, or related technical field.

Here is who you will work with:

• Jonathan – our Product Manager and Lead Support Engineer, Jonathan is the go-to guy for any hardware or software question. There is not a programming problem in existence he fears. Jonathan has a passion for applying signal processing and machine learning techniques to translate neural signals into the recovery of lost motor function. In his spare time, you can find him relaxing with some Destiny 2 (Xbox One, obviously) or judging his friends’ slow cars (#mustangfaithful).
•  Landan – our Support Team’s fearless-leader and Marketing Coordinator. Landan is a World-of-Warcraft loving, beer-aficionado. You can expect to report to Landan directly about your weekto-week project priorities and use him as a resource for your high-level debugging. When he’s not working or drinking beer, you can find him catching bugs or fish in Animal Crossing or taking one of his bikes out for a ride!
• Ripple Sales Team – Led by Jessi Mischel, our Director of North American Sales, and Viral Sheth, Director of International sales, you will assist with sales support in identifying bugs, setting up custom demo code, and more.

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. We are a team.

We pitch in and help each other on all projects. If you are “above” doing certain tasks, Ripple is definitely not a good fit for you.

Ripple is committed to equal employment opportunities and does not discriminate on the basis of any protected class defined by the Equal Employment Opportunity laws. Yeah, I know. You’ve heard it a million times, but we really do mean it. We take pride in having a diverse workplace. We are also willing to make reasonable accommodations to enable individuals with disabilities to perform this job.

About Ripple

Ripple delivers game-changing neurotechnology that greatly advances human health and potential. Our products integrate cutting-edge hardware and software elements designed to read and write from the human nervous system. We are funded by our sales revenue and grants from NIH, DARPA, and the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (*sigh* that was a mouthful.)

Executing this mission requires smart ideas, amazing people, and lots of hard work. To succeed we strive daily to find the best in ourselves as individuals and endeavor to approach our work together with intention, sincerity, and passion.

At its core, Ripple is a community of driven people who are choosing to work together on really hard problems. We are builders and creators and want to see our efforts impact the world for good. Those who thrive at Ripple are self-motivated and work well independently. There are times of intense effort and individual contribution and sacrifice, but we know that what we are building will take time, and living a fulfilling life outside of Ripple will keep team members deeply engaged.

Ripplers are given high-level tasks and a bit of context. Then, they are expected to seek out information, standards, develop new skills and design something great with a team of similarly dedicated and driven colleagues. If you are looking for micromanagement, this is not the place. We encourage individuals to engage in finding solutions to the problems we encounter.

At Ripple, team members are often asked to do things they have never done before. We expect a lot of chances to hear differing opinions, and to be surrounded by people who deeply care about our projects and are interested in the big picture of what Ripple is trying to accomplish. Ripplers are encouraged to take time to help and teach others, and to listen, learn and change their own views until a solution emerges.

We expect great ideas to come from everyone at Ripple. We balance passion and open-mindedness; we strive relentlessly for self-improvement; we own our mistakes and aim to improve, and we all agree to not work with jackasses (no matter how great you think you are). All of us must actively contribute to the quality of our processes and products through thoughtful effort. There is no shortcut to making implantable medical devices or cutting-edge neuroscience tools, but with a strong team building them together, we can do it.

Next Steps

Does this job posting make you warm and fuzzy inside? Are you already on our website checking out our products to see what the fuss is all about?

Then what are you waiting for? Submit your resume by clicking on the “Apply Now” button with a cover letter explaining your interest in this position, and in working for Ripple. Note a cover letter is CRITICAL to be considered for this position. Tell us why this job posting spoke to you. We are excited to hear from you!

Tagged as: BCI, Computational Neuroscience, EEG, Machine Learning, Neuroscience