Business Operations

Chai Discovery • San Francisco, CA

9d

About The Position

Chai Discovery is hiring its first Business Operations lead to take on difficult problems end to end and serve as a high-trust partner and problem solver to the founders and functional leaders. The role spans a broad range of operational work, including renegotiating major contracts, aligning compute spending with business needs, establishing new functions, managing an office move, and supporting recruiting. The successful candidate will identify friction and pain points, address them promptly, and leave stronger systems behind.

The Business Operations lead will help build an operations team with people embedded across key functions, placing this role at the center of that effort from day one. The position may offer a path to running a function. Chai Discovery builds computer-aided molecular design tools and frontier models for biochemical structure and interaction, supporting drug discovery programs at leading pharmaceutical companies.

Requirements

• Generalist capabilities, commercial instinct, and a bias for action.
• Ability to build models for major contracts and negotiate them independently.
• Willingness to handle both strategic and hands-on operational tasks.
• Experience operating and owning outcomes, rather than only advising.
• Comfort working in unfamiliar settings and ability to gain credibility quickly.
• Ability to use AI to work faster while applying judgment rather than trusting it blindly.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in a founder’s office or as an early business operations hire at a high-growth startup.
• Experience owning cost and supplier decisions at a company known for operational rigor.
• Experience as a deployment strategist or as a company founder.
• Consulting or banking training combined with subsequent experience owning outcomes inside a company.
• A technical or scientific background.
• Biotech experience is not required.

Responsibilities

• Own difficult business and operational problems end to end.
• Partner with founders and functional leaders as a trusted problem solver.
• Renegotiate major contracts and build the models needed to support contract decisions.
• Manage compute spending and ensure it matches business needs.
• Stand up new functions and establish effective systems.
• Manage practical operational projects, such as an office move.
• Support recruiting and other needs across the company.
• Identify operational friction and pain points and resolve them promptly.
• Help build an operations team with people embedded across key functions.

Benefits

• Opportunity to work at the vanguard of AI research and frontier biology with world-class people on a mission that matters.
• A culture that protects and promotes high velocity and ownership.
• Compensation described as commensurate with the team’s work.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed