We are an intensely mission-driven team in San Francisco, with members from MIT, Harvard Medical School, Roche, ETH, and Dana-Farber.
We value speed, rigor, curiosity, and a strong work ethic. We look for ambitious, high-integrity people who bring clarity to open-ended problems, take ownership, and follow through.
Chemists and scientists can help shape our therapeutic programs. One of our chemists discovered the target for our next exercise mimetic and designed many of its key compounds.
Human–AI collaboration is central to our work: scientists use AI alongside their own judgment to generate ideas, design experiments, and move programs forward faster.
You’ll get direct feedback from scientific and company decision-makers, with room to become dramatically better and own increasingly important problems. We believe excellent work deserves meaningful reward, ownership, and trust. Responsibility grows with contribution, regardless of title.
ABOUT THE ROLE
You will provide technical leadership for the physical systems that power Capable’s drug-development platform. This is a hands-on role for an engineer who can turn ambiguous, cross-disciplinary problems into sound architectures and working hardware.
Your work may span precision mechanisms, fluid systems, instrumentation, and drug-delivery devices. You will own major technical decisions from first principles through prototype and validation, work through difficult problems at the bench, and help shape how Capable develops reliable hardware as the team grows.
RESPONSIBILITIES
•Own the architecture and technical direction of complex hardware systems, from defining requirements and evaluating concepts through design, prototyping, validation, and iteration.
•Design and integrate mechanical, fluidic, electromechanical, sensing, and control subsystems, making thoughtful tradeoffs among performance, reliability, safety, manufacturability, and speed.
•Resolve difficult design and integration problems involving mechanisms, flow, pressure, sealing, materials compatibility, thermal management, actuation, sensing, and fault recovery.
•Identify the highest-risk assumptions early and define analyses, experiments, test plans, and acceptance criteria that resolve them efficiently.
•Build, test, and debug critical prototypes hands-on; lead failure analysis and drive designs toward reliable operation.
•Guide the technical work of collaborators, vendors, and future hardware teammates while remaining directly involved in design and development.
•Partner with chemists, biologists, and software engineers to translate scientific needs into engineering requirements and decide what to build or improve next.
•Establish practical engineering standards, design-review practices, documentation, and development workflows for Capable’s growing hardware function.
IDEAL QUALIFICATIONS
•A strong record of technical ownership of complex physical systems from ambiguous requirements through working, validated hardware.
•Deep expertise in mechanical engineering or a closely related field, with strong fundamentals in design, analysis, materials, and manufacturing.
•Experience designing and integrating electromechanical or fluidic systems, with the judgment to work across mechanical, electrical, controls, and software interfaces.
•Exceptional hands-on prototyping, debugging, and root-cause analysis skills.
•Demonstrated ability to make high-consequence technical tradeoffs, identify failure modes, and use analysis and experiments to make decisions with incomplete information.
•Clear technical communication and the ability to lead cross-functional work, mentor other engineers, and influence technical direction without becoming removed from the hardware.
•We don’t expect one person to have prior experience in every subsystem or application listed above. We care most about engineering fundamentals, judgment, and the ability to learn and build.
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.