{"id":840152,"url":"https://alion.io/job/onepot-research-scientist-organic-chemistry","title":"Research Scientist, Organic Chemistry","company":{"id":679989,"name":"onepot","domain":"onepot.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/onepot","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"is_intermediary":false,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"Science & Research","role_family":"Science & Research","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["South San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":170000,"max":220000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":220000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-06T22:26:21Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-06","last_verified_at":"2026-09-24T10:32:49Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":48,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":48},"description":"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.\nThe 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.\nThe role\nIn this position, you will bring new reactions, transformations, and capabilities onto onepot's automated platform, and make them work reliably at scale.\nThe 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.\nThis 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.\nThis 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.\nEducation\nPhD in organic chemistry or equivalent experience\n\nExtensive publication record on frontier organic chemistry work\n\nSkills\nOrganic chemistry knowledge\nMechanisms and named reactions\n\nUnderstanding of key theoretical concepts such as molecular orbital theory, basic physical organic chemistry concepts (e.g., free energy linear relationships, kinetic isotope effects)\n\nTransition metal catalysis\n\nRadical transformations\n\nAbility to interpret analytical data (see below)\n\nSynthetic chemistry experience\nBasic synthetic organic chemistry workflows\n\nSchlenk and glovebox experience\n\nPreferred - experience with photochemical and electrochemical transformations\n\nPreferred - experience with automation platforms (Opentrons, Hamilton, Tecan, etc.)\n\nIf you want to avoid experimental work in your next career steps this job is not a good fit\n\nAnalytical techniques\nNMR - 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?\n\nLiquid 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.\n\nMass spectrometry - clear understanding of different ionization methods, fragmentation possibilities in those, particularly in soft ionization methods. Some experience with maintaining those systems.\n\nSoft skills\nExcellent communication, ability to communicate with customers on complex scientific questions\n\nAbility 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”\n\nAbility 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.\n\nWho will thrive here\nYou may be a strong fit if you:\nAsk how a reaction would run two hundred times unattended while you are still developing it at the bench\n\nCannot accept a result you cannot explain - you chase the side product rather than report the yield and move on\n\nWant your hands in the fume hood and your chemistry on the platform, not one or the other\n\nWould rather find the next transformation worth chasing than work through a queue someone else wrote\n\nTreat the robots and our AI agents as your instruments rather than someone else's problem\n\nWant substantial responsibility early, including over how the work gets structured\n\nAre willing to work outside a narrow job description to make the overall system succeed\n\nAdditional requirements\nYou might be asked to travel across the country for a conference\n\nYou might be asked to stay late if there are urgent customer orders\n\nYou might be asked to stay over weekend if urgent work was not completed over the week\n\nPrevious 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\n\nYou 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.\n\nWe 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.\n\nWork activity distribution\n35% existing customer projects - manual rerun, scale up\n\n45% research of new transformations and automation integration\n\n10% lab operations support\n\n10% preparing scientific publications\n\nBenefits\nLunches and dinners (if staying late) in office\n\nCommute stipend\n\nTop-of-the-line insurance\n\nGenerous equity grants\n\nonepot is an equal-opportunity employer.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5986,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"phd","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-12T21:29:18Z"}],"liveness":{"score":26,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.478,"p_room":0.55,"age_days":48,"expected_fill_days":33,"reasons":["conf:5","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-09-24T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":220000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/onepot-research-scientist-organic-chemistry","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/onepot-research-scientist-organic-chemistry.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-09-24T13:56:47Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers"}}