Research Scientist, Organic Chemistry

Onepot•South San Francisco, CA

20h•Onsite

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 closely with and improving the AI agent Phil, as well as working on the robotic setup. The position involves developing and optimizing routes at the bench, translating learnings to the platform for repeatable execution, and running chemistry manually when the automated platform is insufficient. This is a hands-on role requiring experimental design, data interpretation, scaling up routes for customer orders, and publishing findings. The individual will own transformations from literature search to validated, automated execution, ensuring their chemistry runs reliably on the platform.

Requirements

PhD in organic chemistry or equivalent experience.
Extensive publication record on frontier organic chemistry work.
Organic chemistry knowledge.
Understanding 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 (NMR, Liquid Chromatography, Mass Spectrometry).
Synthetic chemistry experience.
Basic synthetic organic chemistry workflows.
Schlenk and glovebox experience.
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 independently.
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.).

Responsibilities

Bring new reactions, transformations, and capabilities onto onepot's automated platform and make them work reliably at scale.
Develop and optimize routes at the bench.
Translate bench learnings into executable protocols for the automated platform.
Work closely with the AI agent Phil and the robotic setup.
Run chemistry manually when the automated platform is not sufficient and identify necessary improvements.
Design and run experiments.
Interpret analytical data.
Scale up routes for customer orders.
Publish scientific findings.
Own transformations from first 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.