Senior RNA Therapeutics Scientist – End-to-End Program Lead

Capable Labs; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Wellness budget

Healthcare coverage

401K

Visa sponsorship

Daily dinners

Job summary

Capable Labs in San Francisco seeks a senior leader to drive RNA-therapeutics programs from target biology through in vivo validation. You will own end-to-end decisions linking mechanism, tissue, potency, durability, safety, and manufacturability.

You will set technical direction, stay hands-on with data, and collaborate with a diverse team to translate science into impactful therapies. This is a senior, hands-on role requiring deep expertise in ASOs, siRNA, and oligonucleotide chemistry, with a

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.
• Experience with methods such as qPCR, ddPCR, RNA-seq, western blot, ELISA, reporter assays, splice assays, cytokine panels, or tissue analysis is helpful; expertise in every method is not required.
• A rigorous, efficient, and resourceful approach to moving a program forward when sequences, assays, models, tissue analysis, or outside capabilities are missing.
• The ability to provide technical leadership while staying close to hands-on work and primary data.

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

oligonucleotides

RNA biology

nucleic-acid chemistry

pharmacology

Tools

qPCR

RNA-seq

Western blot

Job description

Capable Labs in San Francisco seeks a senior leader to drive RNA-therapeutics programs from target biology through in vivo validation. You will own end-to-end decisions linking mechanism, tissue, potency, durability, safety, and manufacturability.

You will set technical direction, stay hands-on with data, and collaborate with a diverse team to translate science into impactful therapies. This is a senior, hands-on role requiring deep expertise in ASOs, siRNA, and oligonucleotide chemistry, with a