Senior/Principal Scientist - In Vivo Pharmacology

We are a vibrant and intensely mission-driven team in San Francisco, comprising members from MIT, Harvard Medical School, Roche, ETH, and Dana-Farber.

We value 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.

About the Role

You will lead the design, execution, and interpretation of mouse studies that determine whether therapeutic candidates reach the right tissue, engage the target, improve the phenotype, and remain tolerable. You will stay hands-on with in-life work while using PK/PD, efficacy, and safety data to make clear next-study and candidate decisions.

Responsibilities

• Design, run, and interpret mouse studies evaluating therapeutic candidates across efficacy, pharmacology, and safety.

• Select appropriate dose, route, schedule, tissues, timepoints, endpoints, controls, and go/no-go criteria for each study.

• Perform and guide dosing by routes including IP, IV, SC, PO, intranasal, and other relevant methods based on mechanism and exposure goals.

• Perform or oversee in-life work, blood collection, necropsy, tissue collection, sample tracking, surgeries, and specialized procedures.

• Analyze PK/PD, efficacy, tolerability, biomarker, and tissue data to determine what dose, route, schedule, timepoint, or candidate to test next.

• Design and execute EEG studies where required, including surgery, electrode placement, monitoring, and electrophysiological-data processing.

• Coordinate with downstream molecular, histology, and biomarker workflows and turn each dataset into the next well-controlled experiment.

Ideal Qualifications

• Substantial hands-on experience designing and running mouse studies in biotech, pharma, academia, or a closely related setting.

• Strong translational judgment: you can design studies that test tissue exposure, target engagement, pathway modulation, phenotype, and tolerability.

• Comfort with multi-route dosing, in-life execution, necropsy, tissue and blood collection, sample tracking, and coordination with downstream assays.

• The ability to interpret PK/PD and efficacy data and make disciplined next-study or candidate decisions.

• A fast, rigorous working style with explicit hypotheses, dose rationale, endpoints, controls, and go/no-go criteria.

• You do not need prior experience with every route, procedure, or assay listed above.

Pay & Benefits

• Compensation and equity will depend on the skills, experience, and scope of impact you bring. We are 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 vegetarian 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.

Application Process

Our process is fast, transparent, and personal. We care about getting to know the person behind the application.

• Initial application

• First phone screen

• Second phone screen

• In-person on site work trial in San Francisco: designed to give both sides a realistic sense of working together. Get to know the founding team!

Apply Today

Curious but not sure? Apply anyway. It takes 5 minutes, and you do not need to be actively job searching to start a conversation.

Some of the best people do not map perfectly to a job description. If this sounds like a place where you could do important work, we would like to hear from you.

And if someone exceptional comes to mind, send them our way here. We read every referral carefully, and if your referral joins Capable, we’ll send you a thank-you bonus.

Equal Opportunity

Capable is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Capable is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.