Research Scientist, Organic Chemistry
About The Position
onepot is automating chemistry with the goal of enabling a self-improvement loop through AI and advanced robotics. This role focuses on bringing new reactions, transformations, and capabilities to the platform by working with the AI agent Phil and the robotic setup. The position involves both bench chemistry and platform development, including optimizing routes, translating learnings to the platform, and running chemistry manually when the automated platform is insufficient. The role requires hands-on experiment design, data interpretation, scaling up routes, and publishing findings. The ideal candidate will own transformations from literature search to validated, automated execution and is committed to seeing their chemistry run on the platform.
Requirements
- PhD in organic chemistry or equivalent experience
- Extensive publication record on frontier organic chemistry work
- Organic chemistry knowledge
- Knowledge of mechanisms and named reactions
- Understanding of key theoretical concepts such as molecular orbital theory, basic physical organic chemistry concepts (e.g., free energy linear relationships, kinetic isotope effects)
- Experience with transition metal catalysis
- Experience with radical transformations
- Ability to interpret analytical data
- Synthetic chemistry experience
- Basic synthetic organic chemistry workflows
- Schlenk and glovebox experience
- NMR fluency in analysis of data from simple proton NMR spectrum to complex 2D NMR experiments
- Ability to execute in situ reaction monitoring
- Understanding of how different mobile and stationary phases influence analytical outcome in liquid chromatography
- Ability to improve separation and make compounds that do not retain on the column
- Experience in both normal phase and RP separations
- Clear understanding of different mass spectrometry ionization methods and fragmentation possibilities, particularly in soft ionization methods
- Excellent communication skills
- Ability to communicate with customers on complex scientific questions
- Ability to convert understanding of a problem into a narrower set of rules/instructions for an AI agent
- Ability to identify issues and work towards solving them
- Willingness to work outside a narrow job description to make the overall system succeed
Nice To Haves
- Experience with photochemical and electrochemical transformations
- Experience with automation platforms (Opentrons, Hamilton, Tecan, etc.)
- Experience with maintaining mass spectrometry systems
Responsibilities
- Bring new reactions, transformations, and capabilities onto onepot's automated platform and ensure they work reliably at scale.
- Develop and optimize chemical routes at the bench.
- Translate bench learnings into executable protocols for the automated platform.
- Collaborate with the AI agent Phil and the robotic setup.
- Run chemistry manually when the automated platform is not yet sufficient and provide feedback for improvement.
- Design and run experiments.
- Interpret analytical data.
- Scale up routes for customer orders.
- Publish scientific findings.
- Own transformations from initial literature search through validated, automated execution.
- Learn new technologies involving internal AI tools and lab's custom hardware & automation.
- Share knowledge with the interdisciplinary team.
Benefits
- Lunches and dinners (if staying late) in office
- Commute stipend
- Top-of-the-line insurance
- Generous equity grants
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
Ph.D. or professional degree
