Lab Instrument Manager

Location
:
On-site, 5 days per week, in our Santa Cruz Office.

Reports To: Principal Scientist

Employment Type: Full-Time Hourly, Non-exempt

Unnatural Products (UNP) is an integrated biotech company at the forefront of macrocyclic peptide drug discovery. Our mission is delivering first-in-class macrocycle therapeutics for high impact disease areas. UNP's approach couples machine learning-based in silico tools with massively parallel peptide chemistry to enable the discovery and rapid optimization of highly non-natural macrocyclic peptides aimed at extracellular targets, undruggable intracellular targets, and beyond.

Based in Santa Cruz, CA, we are a passionate team of scientists and operators doing high-quality science in a beautiful setting - where innovation and work-life balance go hand in hand. Come shape the future of UNP with us!

The Chemistry team at Unnatural Products is seeking an experienced LC-MS / HPLC Systems Specialist to own the performance, uptime, and continuous improvement of our LC and MS systems. Reporting to a Principal Scientist, this is a hands‑on instrumentation role: you'll be the go-to person for keeping our analytical and preparative LC‑MS systems running reliably, troubleshooting hardware and software issues, and working closely with bench chemists to get the most out of our methods, columns, and instrument configurations.

Deep peptide chemistry expertise is not required. We are looking for someone with strong systems‑level instrument troubleshooting instincts (electronics, fluidics, software, and vendor tools) who takes ownership of equipment reliability. Initial priorities are Waters systems and the ISQ EM. The position combines daily system stewardship, rapid response to unplanned failures, planned preventive maintenance, method development, and purification support to provide a sustained full‑time scope.

• Own day-to-day operation, maintenance, and troubleshooting of Waters Auto Purification LC‑MS systems (pumps, autosamplers, PDA detectors, fraction collection) and the ISQ EM mass spectrometer.
• Perform daily system‑readiness checks, including pump health, rotor seals and check valves, solvent and waste levels, and standard runs to confirm MS performance and retention‑time offsets.
• Respond urgently to LC‑MS system failures that interrupt chemistry work.
• Diagnose and resolve hardware, firmware, software, and communication issues across Mass Lynx/Fraction Lynx, Chromeleon, and associated instrument control software.
• Perform routine preventive maintenance, calibration, and qualification to maximize instrument uptime and data quality.
• Maintain and optimize the ISQ EM, including sample‑loop and four‑column fluidics cleaning, pump‑life checks and pump‑head service, UV‑lamp repair, PEEK‑line and UV/MS offset troubleshooting, pump oil and ballasting, and tuning for higher‑mass peptides.
• Partner with chemists across teams to optimize LC‑MS and purification methods - column selection, gradient and flow optimization, MS tuning, and fraction collection parameters (e.g., MIT thresholds, slope‑based peak detection).
• Build and maintain Chromeleon eWorkflows for project QC and routine sample lists; optimize fast and long gradients, fraction files, UV‑versus‑timed collections, prep scale, flow rates, and peak‑split separations.
• Schedule and run preparative purifications from analytical QC data, develop tools that translate analytical methods to prep, and support scale‑up from small‑scale purifications to larger material campaigns.
• Monitor system health and consumables (lamps, columns, seals, solvents, reference standards) and proactively address performance drift before it impacts results.
• Support evaluation and onboarding of new…