Senior RNA Therapeutics Program Lead

Capable; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 156,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Wellness stipend

Healthcare coverage

HSA/FSA/401k

Daily team dinners

Visa sponsorship

Job summary

Capable seeks a senior leader to drive RNA-therapeutics programs from target biology through chemistry design, assays, and in vivo validation in San Francisco. You will connect mechanism, tissue, potency, durability, safety, and manufacturability to make coherent program decisions with end-to-end scientific ownership.

This senior, hands-on role requires leadership while staying close to experimental data, defining design rules, and guiding strategy with cross-functional teams.

Qualifications

• Deep hands-on experience with RNA therapeutics, ASOs, siRNA, splice-switching oligonucleotides, RNA biology, nucleic-acid chemistry, pharmacology, or closely related work.
• Ability to reason from target biology to sequence and chemistry design to the assay readout that will validate or reject the approach.
• Experience designing and interpreting RNA-therapeutics assays at transcript, protein, pathway, cellular, or in vivo tissue level.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of ASOs, siRNAs, splice-switching oligonucleotides, gapmers, steric-blocking oligonucleotides, and other RNA-targeting molecules.
• Select oligonucleotide chemistries—including phosphorothioate backbones, 2′-MOE, 2′-OMe, LNA, cEt, PMO, and GalNAc or lipid conjugation—based on tissue, mechanism, potency, durability, safety, off-target risk, immune activation, and manufacturability.
• Develop sequence strategies for RNase H knockdown, splice modulation, translation blocking, miRNA inhibition, transcript stabilization, and other RNA-level mechanisms.
• Refine design rules involving GC content, RNA secondary structure, isoform selectivity, SNPs, conservation, and specificity.
• Source, synthesize, purify, and quality-control oligonucleotides using appropriate methods such as HPLC/UPLC, LC-MS, MALDI, UV quantification, PAGE, endotoxin/bioburden testing, and batch-level analytical tracking.
• Design and interpret assays for knockdown, splice correction, transcript and protein changes, pathway modulation, cell viability, immune activation, and in vivo tissue target engagement.
• Build the complete program package: target rationale, sequence set, chemistry plan, assay strategy, quality-control data, in vitro and in vivo results, failure modes, and next-step logic.
• Set technical direction, bring in outside expertise where useful, and remain directly involved in the experiments and data that determine program decisions.

Skills

RNA therapeutics

ASOs

siRNA

RNA biology

qPCR

RNA-seq

Western blot

ELISA

Tools

HPLC/UPLC

LC-MS

Job description

Capable seeks a senior leader to drive RNA-therapeutics programs from target biology through chemistry design, assays, and in vivo validation in San Francisco. You will connect mechanism, tissue, potency, durability, safety, and manufacturability to make coherent program decisions with end-to-end scientific ownership.

This senior, hands-on role requires leadership while staying close to experimental data, defining design rules, and guiding strategy with cross-functional teams.