Senior Scientist (Oligonucleotide Conjugation)

Career Category

Job Description

Join Amgen’s Mission of Serving Patients

At Amgen, if you feel like you’re part of something bigger, it’s because you are. Our shared mission—to serve patients living with serious illnesses—drives all that we do.

Since 1980, we’ve helped pioneer the world of biotech in our fight against the world’s toughest diseases. With our focus on four therapeutic areas –Oncology, Inflammation, General Medicine, and Rare Disease– we reach millions of patients each year. Amgen is advancing a broad and deep pipeline of medicines to treat cancer, heart disease, inflammatory conditions, rare diseases, and obesity and obesity-related conditions. As a member of the Amgen team, you’ll help make a lasting impact on the lives of patients as we research, manufacture, and deliver innovative medicines to help people live longer, fuller happier lives.

Our award-winning culture is collaborative, innovative, and science based. If you have a passion for challenges and the opportunities that lay within them, you’ll thrive as part of the Amgen team. Join us and transform the lives of patients while transforming your career.

Senior Scientist (Oligonucleotide Conjugation)

What you will do

Let’s do this. Let’s change the world. We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated conjugation chemist to expand the pre-clinical oligonucleotide conjugation capabilities of the Genetic Medicines team, with a focus on protein-oligonucleotide, small molecule-oligonucleotide, and peptide-oligonucleotide conjugates. This role supports Amgen’s pipeline of siRNA-based therapeutics.

Key Responsibilities

• Designing, synthesizing, purifying, and analytically characterizing oligonucleotide conjugates-including optimizing synthesis/conjugation/purification protocols.
• Drive technical execution of conjugation projects from start to finish and perform hands-on conjugate synthesis (developing and optimizing conjugation strategies and purification methods).
• Serve as an oligonucleotide conjugation subject-matter expert (SME) in cross-functional team meetings.
• Train as needed, collaborate with the Genetic Medicines group and cross-functional teams to meet project objectives and timelines.
• Prepare research results for presentations, patent applications, and scientific publications.

Additional Responsibilities: The candidate should be motivated to expand their skillset, have a flexible mindset and willing to learn oligonucleotide chemistry. Prepare oligonucleotides as needed. Collaborate with biology and analytical teams to conduct biophysical/biochemical assays (e.g. ELISA, SPR, FRET, BLI, DSF, DLS) to evaluate target binding, stability, and additional oligonucleotide conjugate properties. Maintain detailed electronic lab notebooks and remain complaint on safety & required training.

What we expect of you

We are all different, yet we all use our unique contributions to serve patients. The successful candidate will bring strong expertise in oligonucleotide conjugation chemistry and will work at the interface of molecular design, analytical characterization, and platform innovation. This scientist will collaborate across multidisciplinary teams to develop robust conjugation technologies that improve therapeutic performance, stability, manufacturability, and translational potential. The passionate and dedicated professional we seek is a motivated research scientist with these qualifications.

Basic Qualifications:

Doctorate degree

OR

Master’s degree in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Chemical Engineering or related discipline and 2 years of industry experience in biotech/pharma with specific experience in oligonucleotide conjugation – e.g. designing, synthesizing, and characterizing oligo conjugates of small molecules, linkers, peptides, proteins, etc.

OR

Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Chemical Engineering or related discipline and 4 years of experience in biotech/pharma with specific experience in oligonucleotide conjugation – e.g. designing, synthesizing, and characterizing oligo conjugates of small molecules, linkers, peptides, proteins, etc.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Expertise in conjugation chemistries and site-specific bioconjugation techniques, along with familiarity with RNA therapeutic modalities (ASO, siRNA, etc.).
• Proficiency in preparative and analytical chromatography techniques (IEX, RP-HPLC, SEC, LC‑MS) for oligonucleotides, and conjugates thereof, is required.
• Experience with automated oligonucleotide synthesizers and associated processes (on-resin conjugation, cleavage & deprotection, desaltin