First Finance Hire
Required skills
- first finance hire
- complex financial operations
- pharmaceutical partnerships
- complex revenue recognition
- compliance requirements
- quality of our books
- close process
- financial model
- cash forecast
- strategic questions
Nice to have
- AI research
- frontier biology
- mission that matters
- high velocity
- ownership
- compensate our team accordingly
Role summary
Chai Discovery is seeking its first finance hire, a financial generalist with operational rigor and strong financial judgment to own the company's financial operating system end-to-end. This role is critical for a fast-growing AI drug discovery startup with complex financial operations, including significant compute spend, data acquisition costs, and pharmaceutical partnerships requiring intricate revenue recognition and compliance. The hire will manage accounting and finance vendors, improve systems and controls, lead audit readiness, and own the quality of books, close processes, financial modeling, and cash forecasting. Once foundational elements are established, the focus will shift to strategic questions like capital allocation and modeling major investments.
About Chai Discovery
Chai Discovery builds the computer-aided design suite for molecules. Eli Lilly, GSK, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb, argenx and Novartis all use Chai to power drug discovery programs. AI is reinventing life sciences the same way it reinvented software engineering, and our team is building that future.
We train frontier models that learn the underlying foundations of biochemical structure and interaction. We pair this with a computational workspace to iterate on molecules from idea to medicine, helping scientists move faster and develop medicines beyond the reach of existing methods.
We value diverse perspectives and are ready to find greatness in unexpected places.
About the role
We are making our first finance hire. Someone we can trust to own Chai's financial operating system end to end. Chai is a small, fast-growing company with complex financial operations; heavy spend on compute and data acquisition; and pharmaceutical partnerships with complex revenue recognition and compliance requirements. We need someone who can make sure the machinery underneath the business is exceptionally well run, and give us the visibility to make good decisions as we scale.
You will own the quality of our books and close process, build a trusted view of where our money is going, and take over the financial model and cash forecast. You'll manage accounting and finance vendors, improve all systems and controls, and lead our audit readiness.
Once the foundations are in place, we expect your attention will turn towards strategic questions: allocating capital, modeling major investments, negotiating important relationships, and generally supporting key decisions as we grow.
About you
You are a financial generalist who combines operational rigor with strong financial judgment. You are sophisticated enough to understand the entire financial picture of the company, but hands-on enough to personally chase down a strange invoice, manage an accounting firm, negotiate a vendor renewal, or rebuild a cash forecast. Nothing is beneath you if it matters to the business.
You likely have meaningful experience inside a startup. You may have been an early finance hire or second-in-command at a high-growth technology company, come from strategic finance after rigorous training in banking, or started in accounting and grown into a broader role.
Most importantly, you own outcomes. When something important falls between functions, your instinct is to understand it, fix it, and build a system so it stays fixed. All with a mindset of making complexity disappear and avoiding unnecessary process.
We offer
The opportunity to work at the vanguard of AI research and frontier biology, with world-class people, on a mission that matters. We protect and promote a culture of high velocity and ownership. We compensate our team accordingly.
