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Software Engineer, Product

Chai Discovery
Posted onFeb 23, 2026
LocationSan Francisco, California, United States (On-site)
Employment typeFull-time

About Chai Discovery

Chai Discovery builds frontier AI models to design molecules and transform how new cures are found. We are a craft-obsessed team setting out to re-architect drug discovery and save lives.

The Chai founding team brought together leading researchers in this space and top silicon valley operators. Our founders led seminal accomplishments at top AI-for-biology programs and labs, co-invented protein language modelling, built state-of-the-art folding algorithms, and sold AI adopted by top-10 pharma companies. We are backed by top-tier investors, including OpenAI, Thrive Capital, Dimension, Conviction, Lachy Groom, Amplify, and many more.

About the role

Product engineers build the Chai software platform: tools for scientists to query models, visualize molecular structures, and interpret data with our AI in the loop. You'll collaborate on a daily basis with designers, ML researchers, and wet-lab teams to make complex science repeatable. You care about reliability, elegance and utility—on the product surface as well as what's under the hood.

After years of foundational R&D, Chai's models are moving beyond protein structure prediction into real-world therapeutic engineering. This is a chance to bring the most advanced AI drug design models to market, working alongside a craft-obsessed team of micro pessimists and macro-optimists.

About you

You are mission-driven and want to define the gold standard for purposeful AI technology. You should have:

Software experience:

  • Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science or related field.

  • 3 + years building production web applications with modern frameworks (React/Vue, TypeScript/JavaScript, Node/Go/Python back-ends).

  • Have a knack for finding the smallest amount of code to solve a user problem well.

  • Care about making pixel-perfect products.

  • Data-driven: instrument features, analyze usage, and iterate quickly on feedback

  • Familiar with automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and monitoring/alerting for 24 × 7 production services

  • Experience optimizing performance or interactive visualizations is a plus

Communication & collaboration

  • Able to explain technical trade-offs to non-engineers and to translate scientific requirements into engineering tasks

  • Enjoy pair-reviewing code, writing docs, and sharing knowledge with teammates

Mindset:

  • Interest in biotech or computational biology; prior exposure to scientific data, bio-visualization, or HPC workloads is a bonus but not required

  • Comfortable iterating quickly in a startup where requirements, and underlying science, evolve fast

  • Bias for shipping: you value small, incremental improvements over big-bang rewrites

  • Clear communicator who can simplify complex science for external partners and internal stakeholders

  • Comfortable in a fast-moving startup where priorities shift and you own features end-to-end, from idea to production and beyond

We offer

  • Frontier technology: work on the technologies that promises to fundamentally change how new therapeutics are created.

  • World-class people: work with world-renowned leaders in the AI x Biology ecosystem.

  • Velocity and ownership:we move incredibly fast and liberally distribute ownership, which means continuous learning and career growth opportunities are guaranteed.

  • Strong culture and mission:we foster a supportive culture that is mission-driven and high-energy.

  • Highly competitive compensation: we attract the best talent and compensate them accordingly.

Chai Discovery

View company profile

Chai Discovery builds frontier AI foundation models to predict and reprogram biochemical molecular interactions, transforming drug discovery from a slow, trial-and-error process into an engineering discipline capable of designing medicines against previously undruggable targets.

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