Senior Organic Chemist

About the Role

We have built a novel and differentiated chemistry platform, and see many opportunities beyond what we have already explored. Your job will be to expand its capabilities and demonstrate its value on real pharmaceutical and fine chemical targets.

Working closely with our Chief Scientific Officer, you’ll identify and validate new reaction classes, devise routes that take advantage of our chemistry, and turn those ideas into robust experimental results. You’ll own the synthesis end-to-end: designing and running reactions, developing and optimizing new transformations, and rapidly purifying, characterizing, and reporting products.

Electrochemistry experience is not required. We can get an excellent synthetic chemist up to speed on our system quickly. What matters most is strong synthetic intuition, speed at the bench, and the ability to take a target from route concept through validated chemistry.

Responsibilities

• Synthetic Route Execution: Take high-level direction, then develop and run whole routes independently: read the procedure, execute it correctly, adapt it where it doesn’t transfer, and deliver assigned targets.
• Reaction Development: Develop and optimize conditions for reaction types beyond our current set, including those requiring standard air-free technique.
• Electrochemical Steps: Learn the cell and mediator chemistry hands-on with our Director of Electrochemical Engineering, run the electrochemical step as one step among multiple, and help expand the reaction scope.
• Purification and Characterization: Purify and characterize independently and quickly, and set a documentation and reporting standard the growing R&D team can follow.
• Safety and Lab Standards: Work within the Greentown Labs safety environment from day one and run hazard assessments for every new reaction type you introduce.
• Team and Technical Collaboration: Contribute in R&D meetings, work with our scientific advisors on open chemistry questions, and mentor our chemistry co-op informally on technique.

Requirements

Many strong candidates don’t fit a standard blueprint. If you bring relevant experience and are excited about what we’re building, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t check every box.

• Required:
  • PhD in chemistry or a closely related field with a research focus in organic synthesis: new reactions, condition optimization, novel compounds
  • Deep and diverse hands-on experience across many reaction types
  • Standard air-free technique on a Schlenk line, in vials and flasks
  • Independent purification by column chromatography and characterization by NMR, IR, MS, UV-Vis, HPLC and GC (some hands-on, some via analytical labs)
• Nice to Have:
  • 2-4 years of industry or startup experience is a plus, but not a hard requirement: if you’re coming straight out of a PhD, or have internship experience only, we’d still like to hear from you
  • Retrosynthetic analysis
  • Cheminformatics or computational chemistry
  • Electrochemistry experience is not required. We already have expertise in this area in our team and expect you to learn it on the job within weeks

Working Style & Character

• You are a team player who joins meetings and contributes, and who cares about building a great team culture as we grow
• You are good at taking high-level direction and running with it
• You have good judgement about when to ask for help: you don’t ask permission for everything, but you also don’t spend two days stuck on a five-minute question
• You are good at managing your own time against milestones and deadlines
• You operate safely without being reminded

Benefits

• Meaningful equity and benefits
• Flexible, family-friendly schedule

Pay

$110K to $170K/year (negotiable). The range is deliberately broad because it spans a fresh PhD through to five or more years of industry experience.

Schedule

In-person at Greentown Labs, Somerville, MA