Research Scientist, Organic Chemistry

About the company

Onepot AI leverages machine learning and an automated laboratory to rapidly synthesize complex chemical molecules for drug discovery partners.

About this role

onepot is automating chemistry. Our goal is to enable a self-improvement loop for chemistry by combining AI and advanced robotics. This goal can only be achieved by bringing people of various backgrounds together — ML engineers, chemists, computer scientists, and hardware engineers. Our current team comprises of the best people in their respective fields, and we are looking for a new team member. The focus of the job is to bring new reactions, transformations, and capabilities to the platform. This can be done by working closely with and improving our AI agent Phil, as well as working on the robotic set up. Additionally, we will ask you to work on custom projects in cases, where automated platform is not good enough yet. THE ROLE In this position, you will bring new reactions, transformations, and capabilities onto onepot's automated platform, and make them work reliably at scale. The work spans bench chemistry and platform development. You will develop and optimize routes at the bench, then translate what you learn into something the platform can execute repeatedly — working closely with our AI agent Phil and with the robotic setup itself. Where the automated platform is not yet good enough, you will run the chemistry manually and say what would have to change for it not to be. This is a hands-on role. You will design and run experiments, interpret your own analytical data, scale up routes for customer orders, and publish what is worth publishing. You will own transformations from first literature search through validated, automated execution. This is not a role where you hand a protocol to someone else and move on. We are looking for a chemist who wants their chemistry running on the platform, and who will keep working on it until it does. EDUCATION - PhD in organic chemistry or equivalent experience - Extensive publication record on frontier organic chemistry work SKILLS ORGANIC CHEMISTRY KNOWLEDGE - 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) - Transition metal catalysis - Radical transformations - Ability to interpret analytical data (see below) SYNTHETIC CHEMISTRY EXPERIENCE - Basic synthetic organic chemistry workflows - Schlenk and glovebox experience - Preferred — experience with photochemical and electrochemical transformations - Preferred — experience with automation platforms (Opentrons, Hamilton, Tecan, etc.) - If you want to avoid experimental work in your next career steps this job is not a good fit ANALYTICAL TECHNIQUES - NMR — fluency in analysis of data from a simple proton NMR spectrum to complex 2D NMR experiments. Ability to execute in situ reaction monitoring. Good check: do I know what DOSY is? - Liquid chromatography — understanding how different mobile and stationary phases influence analytical outcome. How to improve separation? How to make something that does not retain on the column? Ability to do both normal phase and RP separations, experience in both. - Mass spectrometry — clear understanding of different ionization methods, fragmentation possibilities in those, particularly in soft ionization methods. Some experience with maintaining those systems. SOFT SKILLS - Excellent communication, ability to communicate with customers on complex scientific questions - Ability to convert your understanding of a problem into a narrower set of rules/instructions, that could be picked up by an AI agent. Not “I feel like it”, but “here is why this peak corresponds to this proton” - Ability to identify issues and work towards solving that. Not “the data did not get synced, can someone fix that”, but work with a company’s AI agent to troubleshoot the issue and only escalate when no other options left. WHO WILL THRIVE HERE You may be a strong fit if you: - Ask how a reaction would run two hundred times unattended while you are still developing it at the bench - Cannot accept a result you cannot explain — you chase the side product rather than report the yield and move on - Want your hands in the fume hood and your chemistry on the platform, not one or the other - Would rather find the next transformation worth chasing than work through a queue someone else wrote - Treat the robots and our AI agents as your instruments rather than someone else's problem - Want substantial responsibility early, including over how the work gets structured - Are willing to work outside a narrow job description to make the overall system succeed ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS - You might be asked to travel across the country for a conference - You might be asked to stay late if there are urgent customer orders - You might be asked to stay over weekend if urgent work was not completed over the week - Previous two aspects are preventable with proper scheduling of work, if that happens, we expect you to identify those issues and correct them down the road - You are expected to learn new technologies involving internal AI tools and lab’s custom hardware & automation. Our team is very interdisciplinary and learning from other team member as well as sharing your knowledge with the rest of the team is very important. - We are not a clock-in, clock-out environment. We expect substantial ownership and flexibility: sometimes that means leaving early, and sometimes it means staying late to finish an experiment or meet an important customer commitment. We evaluate people primarily on judgment, output, and whether they step up when the work genuinely requires it—not on performative hours. WORK ACTIVITY DISTRIBUTION - 35% existing customer projects — manual rerun, scale up - 45% research of new transformations and automation integration - 10% lab operations support - 10% preparing scientific publications BENEFITS - Lunches and dinners (if staying la