Lipid Chemist | Ionizable Lipids & Targeting Conjugates

Quiet Capital; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 171,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) plan with company match

Paid parental leave

PTO: 20 days

On-site meals and snacks

Job summary

NewLimit is seeking a Lipid Chemist to design, synthesize, and characterize ionizable lipids and lipid conjugates for our targeting LNP platform, with a focus on delivering nucleic acids beyond the liver.

You will own bench design, work with Delivery Sciences and biology teams to build a portfolio of ionizable and targeting lipids, and contribute to SAR-driven design cycles for pipeline programs.

Qualifications

• PhD in Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, or related, plus 1–2 years of relevant work; or an MS with 5 years of focused lipid design experience for liposomal or lipid nanoparticle applications.
• SAR-driven design, synthesis, purification, and characterization of ionizable lipids and PEG-lipid conjugates, using tools such as ChemDraw, SciFinder, Reaxsys, and AI-based SAR prediction tools for tLNP applications.
• Working knowledge of conjugation chemistries for attaching targeting moieties such as peptides, antibodies, nanobodies, and small-molecule ligands, including linker design and site-specific handles.
• Practical purification skills spanning normal- and reverse-phase chromatography and preparative HPLC.
• Analytical characterization across LC-CAD, LC-UV, LC-MS/MS, and NMR (1H, 13C, and 31P as needed).

Responsibilities

• Design new ionizable lipids and lipid conjugates for antibodies, peptides, and other targeting moieties across multiple structural families.
• Devise and execute practical synthetic routes to priority targets to support pipeline needs for targeting lipids.
• Plan synthesis and purification for these modalities with scale and final purity in mind from the outset.
• Build ionizable and targeting lipids for the tLNP platform using an SAR-based approach to guide the next design cycle.
• Develop conjugation chemistry that links peptides, antibodies, nanobodies, and small-molecule ligands to lipid anchors for cell- and tissue-selective delivery.
• Turn in vitro and in vivo data from discovery teams into concrete structural hypotheses and revised molecules.
• Present synthetic strategy, experimental results, and SAR conclusions, authoring protocols and technical reports.

Skills

Lipid design

Lipid synthesis

SAR-driven design

Conjugation chemistry

HPLC purification

LC-MS/NMR analysis

AI SAR tools

Data analysis

Education

PhD in Chemistry

MS in related field

Tools

ChemDraw

SciFinder

Reaxys

AI SAR tools

Job description

NewLimit is seeking a Lipid Chemist to design, synthesize, and characterize ionizable lipids and lipid conjugates for our targeting LNP platform, with a focus on delivering nucleic acids beyond the liver.

You will own bench design, work with Delivery Sciences and biology teams to build a portfolio of ionizable and targeting lipids, and contribute to SAR-driven design cycles for pipeline programs.