Program Lead, Therapeutic Discovery

Capable Labs; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 340,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Wellness budget

Healthcare coverage (medical, dental,

HSA/FSA/401K

Daily team dinners

Visa sponsorship

Job summary

Capable Labs is seeking a driven leader to spearhead early-stage therapeutic programs. You will work closely with founders and a global, multidisciplinary team to translate scientific ideas into actionable programs, selecting modalities and overseeing assays, translational plans, and budgets.

You’ll build teams and infrastructure around promising programs and may receive substantial early validation capital for strong candidates.

Qualifications

• You have strong scientific judgment and can critically evaluate papers, mechanisms, phenotypes, or therapeutic ideas to determine potential as real programs.
• You are high-agency, precise, skeptical, and execution-oriented, moving quickly with scientific rigor.

Responsibilities

• Lead new therapeutic programs from concept through early validation.
• Define targets, mechanisms, modalities, assays, biomarkers, translational path, budget, timeline, and kill criteria.
• Select modalities for projects and execute: literature review, experimental design, molecule design/sourcing, assays, in vitro and in vivo testing, data review, and future program decisions.

Skills

Scientific leadership

Analytical reasoning

Execution-focused

Job description

About the Role

You’ll work closely with the founders and a small team from MIT, Harvard Medical School, Baker Lab, and Radical Numerics.

We are looking for speed and rigor, coupled with excitement, drive and a strong work ethic. In an early-stage environment, we value people who can bring clarity to open-ended problems, take ownership of the next steps, and follow through with energy.

Capable Labs is a place for ambitious, high-integrity people who want to become dramatically better. You will be surrounded by people who care intensely about the work, get close feedback from the people making scientific and company-defining decisions, and have room to own increasingly important problems.

We believe excellent work should be met with meaningful reward, ownership, and trust. Responsibility is earned through contribution, not title alone: anyone who demonstrates the judgment, rigor, and follow-through to move important work forward can earn meaningful scope.

What You’ll Do

• Lead new therapeutic programs from concept through early validation. These may include programs in contraception, menstrual suppression, stress resilience, cognition, exercise mimetics, recovery, sleep, or other areas where biology could meaningfully expand human health and capability.

• Bring forward ambitious, scientifically grounded program ideas aimed at meaningfully expanding human health or capability.

• Turn scientific ideas into executable programs: define the target, mechanism, modality, assay strategy, biomarkers, translational path, budget, timeline, and kill criteria.

• Select the right modality for each project, which may include RNA, small molecules, peptides, polymers, biologics-adjacent approaches, or other fast‑iteration platforms.

• Not only develop proposals but also execute: target selection, literature review, experimental design, molecule design or sourcing, assay development, in vitro testing, in vivo testing, data review, and next‑round program decisions in close collaboration with our scientific team.

• For promising programs, help build the team and infrastructure around them: hire scientists, identify advisors, select partners, source animal models, procure instrumentation, and manage execution.

• Lead programs while remaining close to the science and data. For strong programs, we can commit significant early validation capital—up to $1M for initial experiments, and substantially more if data support continued investment.

Who You Are

• Ideally, you have created or helped create a drug candidate that has advanced into clinical trials or reached the market.

• You have previously originated and advanced your own scientific programs, not just contributed to others’ roadmaps. You can provide examples where you identified a promising mechanism or opportunity, designed the experimental path, drove execution, and produced concrete outcomes—meaningful data, decisions, publications, patents, products, funding, or similar.

• You are motivated by high‑impact biological problems—including sleep, cognition, reproductive health, disease resistance, recovery, aging, and the physiological constraints on human performance and health.

• You have strong scientific judgment and are able to critically evaluate papers, mechanisms, phenotypes, or therapeutic ideas to determine their potential as real programs, including defining targets, modalities, assay plans, biomarkers, model systems, translational paths, and decision points.

• You are high‑agency, precise, skeptical, and execution‑oriented. You move quickly while maintaining scientific rigor.

Pay & Benefits

• $180,000-$340,000 salary, plus equity options with an implied current value of approximately $50,000-$200,000 before exercise cost, taxes, dilution, and liquidity risk.

• Compensation will depend on the skills, experience, and scope of impact you bring. If your background, experience, or compensation needs fall outside this range, we are still open to a conversation based on the scope and impact you could bring.

• $500+ monthly wellness budget for training, supplements, coaching, recovery, or other tools that help you perform at your best.

• Healthcare: We offer a broad range of medical, dental, and vision coverage options, with Capable covering 100% of the base policy.

• You will also have access to HSA, FSA, and 401K plans.

• Healthy dinners with the team are provided daily.

• We support visa sponsorship where appropriate, including O-1, H-1B, J-1, TN, and other employment‑based pathways. Our team is already international, with members from Canada, Pakistan, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, China, India, and the United States.