Scientist

We are a vibrant and intensely mission-driven team in San Francisco, comprising members from MIT, Harvard Medical School, Roche, ETH, and Dana-Farber.

We value speed and rigor, coupled with excitement, drive, and a strong work ethic. In an early-stage environment, we value people who can bring clarity to open-ended problems, take ownership of the next steps, and follow through with energy.

Capable Labs is a place for ambitious, high-integrity people who want to become dramatically better. You will be surrounded by people who care intensely about the work, get close feedback from the people making scientific and company-defining decisions, and have room to own increasingly important problems.

We believe excellent work should be met with meaningful reward, ownership, and trust. Responsibility is earned through contribution, not title alone: anyone who demonstrates the judgment, rigor, and follow-through to move important work forward can earn meaningful scope.

About the Role

You will synthesize, purify, and characterize compounds for Capable’s small-molecule and adjacent therapeutic programs. You will own defined chemistry from route planning through material ready for biological testing, troubleshoot reactions and instruments, and contribute practical chemistry insight to the next design cycle. The work can include both solution-phase and solid-phase methods.

Responsibilities

• Execute and optimize synthesis workflows, including route planning, reaction setup, workup, purification, characterization, and sample preparation for biological testing.

• Design, run, and troubleshoot organic reactions involving functional-group transformations, coupling chemistry, protecting-group strategies, late-stage diversification, and parallel synthesis.

• Use solution-phase and solid-phase synthesis workflows where useful, including cleavage, deprotection, crude analysis, purification, and final quality control.

• Resolve issues involving low conversion, poor selectivity, side products, decomposition, incomplete deprotection, solubility, purification, recovery, or instrument downtime.

• Purify and characterize compounds using analytical HPLC, prep HPLC, LC-MS, NMR, flash chromatography, SFC, and related methods as appropriate.

• Prepare compounds for in vitro and in vivo studies and maintain clear experimental and batch-level quality-control records.

• Contribute chemistry insight on synthetic feasibility, SAR, purity, yield, stability, solubility, and structure-property relationships.

Ideal Qualifications

• Hands-on synthetic chemistry experience and strong experimental discipline; your education path matters less than your ability to learn quickly and produce high-quality results.

• Interest in owning defined synthesis work end to end, from route and reaction execution through purification, characterization, documentation, and biological handoff.

• A creative, fast, and rigorous approach to solving reaction, purification, analytical, and instrument problems.

• Interest in staying close to biological readouts and understanding how potency, efficacy, stability, exposure, or tolerability data inform chemistry priorities.

• High agency when a synthesis fails, an instrument is down, results look unusual, material is missing, or a handoff is unclear.

• Experience with some of the listed synthetic or analytical methods is valuable; expertise in every method is not required.

Pay & Benefits

• In addition to the posted salary range, we offer generous equity options.

• Compensation will depend on the skills, experience, and scope of impact you bring. If your background, experience, or compensation needs fall outside this range, we are still open to a conversation based on the scope and impact you could bring.

• $500+ monthly wellness budget for training, supplements, coaching, recovery, or other tools that help you perform at your best.

• Healthcare: We offer a broad range of medical, dental, and vision coverage options, with Capable covering 100% of the base policy.

• You will also have access to HSA, FSA, and 401K plans.

• Healthy dinners with the team are provided daily.

• We support visa sponsorship where appropriate, including O-1, H-1B, J-1, TN, and other employment-based pathways. Our team is already international, with members from Canada, Pakistan, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, China, India, and the United States.

Application Process

Our process is fast, transparent, and personal. We care about getting to know the person behind the application.

• Initial application

• First phone screen

• Second phone screen

• In-person work trial in San Francisco: designed to give both sides a realistic sense of working together. Get to know the founding team!

 

Apply Today

Curious but not sure? Apply anyway. It takes 5 minutes, and you do not need to be actively job searching to start a conversation.

Some of the best people do not map perfectly to a job description. If this sounds like a place where you could do important work, we would like to hear from you.

And if someone exceptional comes to mind, send them our way here. We read every referral carefully, and if your referral joins Capable, we’ll send you a thank-you bonus.

Equal Opportunity

Capable is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Capable is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.