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Scientist, Chemistry
Octant Bio
Emeryville, CA, USA
USD 130k-145k / year + Equity
Posted on Mar 11, 2026
COMPANY
Octant is pioneering a new generation of precision medicines by combining synthetic biology, chemistry, and AI/ML to tackle complex cellular mechanisms driving human disease. We are a small molecule therapeutics company scaling drug discovery to unlock therapies for genetically defined and historically intractable diseases.
JOB DESCRIPTION
Octant is seeking a driven and curious Scientist to join the OpenADMET team. OpenADMET’s mission is to build open predictive models of safety and toxicity for small molecules to improve humanity’s ability to more reliably, cheaply, and effectively treat disease. At a high level, you’ll play a hands-on role in leveraging Octant’s Navigator platform to synthesize and analyze novel small molecules that modulate disease-relevant cellular mechanisms. Specifically, you will support the OpenADMET initiative at Octant by building libraries targeting the “avoidome” to generate high quality data to fuel machine learning model development. You will also expand our platform chemistry capabilities by pioneering novel synthetic and analytical methods. Finally, you will leverage your platform expertise to further Octant’s drug discovery efforts.
This is an opportunity to revolutionize the way we build drugs.
THIS JOB MIGHT BE GREAT FOR YOU IF YOU HAVE:
- PhD in Organic Chemistry, Chemical Biology, or related field with 0-3 years experience post PhD as a post doctoral candidate or industry scientist
- Expertise with multi step organic synthesis, purification and analysis (HPLC, LC/MS, NMR)
- Familiarity with the application of LC-MS methods for proteomics or high throughput screening
- Experience with laboratory automation platforms and high-throughput screening methods
- Excellent problem-solving and communication skills
NICE TO ALSO HAVE:
- Experience coding for data analysis, visualization or lab automation (e.g., Python)
- Familiarity with high-throughput experimentation and direct-to-biology high throughput chemistry approaches
Optional: Along with your application, please share a paper/preprint/software repo that best highlights your strengths so we can better understand work you've led. If there is nothing public, please summarize that work in a few paragraphs. We'd love to also hear about things you've been proud to build or lead outside of science.
The expected annual salary for this role is in the range of $130,000 to $145,000, depending on experience level. We offer health benefits (medical, dental, vision), equity, and 401(k) matching.
Octant is located in Emeryville, California and we work onsite.
Octant is an equal opportunity company that values applicants of all backgrounds. We’re committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive work environment. We value less traditional backgrounds, and may consider an equivalent combination of knowledge, skills, education, and experience to meet minimum qualifications. We know that confidence-gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates, so please don’t hesitate to apply — we’d love to hear from you.
OCTANT’S NAVIGATOR PLATFORM:
Octant’s Platform, “The Navigator,” accelerates the design, build, test, and learn iterations across chemistry and biology to build drugs against cellular mechanisms. The Navigator is an expanding set of drug discovery and development capabilities with three interwoven components that operate together:
- Generative Biology – Multiplexed measurements from engineered sensors in human cells to understand cellular mechanisms
- Generative Chemistry – Nanoliter-scale chemical synthesis for rapid exploration of local & targeted chemical space
- Generative AI – ML/AI ingests large-scale biological and chemical datasets and drives iteration of experiments to build better molecules faster
Together, the Navigator platform drives week-to-week progress on our drug programs, generative 3M+ readouts each week across multiple therapeutic areas.