Lipid Chemist, Targeted Delivery & LNP Design

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health, Dental, Vision insurance

401(k) plan with company match

Paid parental leave

20 days PTO + holidays

On-site meals

Job summary

NewLimit seeks a Lipid Chemist to design, synthesize, and characterize ionizable lipids and PEG-lipid conjugates for targeting LNPs, with emphasis on delivering nucleic acids beyond the liver. This hands-on bench role collaborates with Delivery Sciences and biology teams to build a robust ionizable lipid portfolio.

The ideal candidate will have a PhD (or MS with substantial lipid design experience) and a proven ability to execute synthetic routes, purification, and SAR-driven optimization across

Qualifications

• PhD in Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, or a related discipline, plus 1–2 years of relevant work; or an MS with 5 years focused lipid design experience for liposomal or lipid nanoparticle applications.

Responsibilities

• Design new ionizable lipids and lipid conjugates for antibodies, peptides, and other targeting moieties across multiple structural families, pushing the platform beyond current-generation materials.
• 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, delivering against project timelines.
• 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

Ionizable lipids

PEG-lipid conjugates

Conjugation chemistry

Analytical LC-MS/MS

NMR spectroscopy

HPLC purification

SAR-driven design

Education

PhD in Chemistry

Tools

ChemDraw

SciFinder

Reaxys

AI-based SAR tools

Job description

NewLimit seeks a Lipid Chemist to design, synthesize, and characterize ionizable lipids and PEG-lipid conjugates for targeting LNPs, with emphasis on delivering nucleic acids beyond the liver. This hands-on bench role collaborates with Delivery Sciences and biology teams to build a robust ionizable lipid portfolio.

The ideal candidate will have a PhD (or MS with substantial lipid design experience) and a proven ability to execute synthetic routes, purification, and SAR-driven optimization across