Head of Biology

Parallel Bio•San Francisco, CA

2d•$250,000 - $298,000

About The Position

Drug discovery has a translation problem: more than 95% of drugs that succeed in animal models fail in humans. We're building the alternative: human-first drug discovery, powered by organoids and AI, running on real human biology from the very first experiment. Our platform is 87% concordant with clinical patient data - a vast improvement over the 3% translational success rate of animals. We’ve demonstrated the ability to model immunotoxicology, immunogen stimulation, and two autoimmune diseases with more on the way. Numerous pharma partners including 3 Fortune 500 companies are already using the platform. We've raised ~$30M from AIX Ventures, Marc Benioff, Jeff Dean, and Y Combinator. With the FDA Modernization Act 3.0 and the FDA's March 2026 validation framework, the regulatory tailwinds only continue to get stronger. The opportunity ahead of the company is generational: build the first scaled engine for generating real human biological data, and use it to fundamentally change how medicines are discovered. We're building the engine. You decide where to aim it. Parallel Bio's platform can model essentially any aspect of human immunology: infectious disease, cancer, autoimmunity, allergy, transplantation, and beyond. As we scale toward fully autonomous data factories generating petabytes of human biological data per day, the questions in front of us shift from what can we do to what should we do. Which diseases should be modeled? Which targets do we pursue ourselves and which do we partner out to pharma? How do we tell compelling stories with our data? Those questions are yours to answer. You are the highest scientific authority at Parallel Bio. You'll craft the strategies that dictate where the company's experimental capacity gets pointed, which diseases are pursued, and how we approach drugging them. You are not running a bench team. You are driving the company’s biological strategy, setting direction across every group that depends on real scientific judgment to know what to build next. This is a scientific strategy role, not a bench role. You're not running experiments or managing a lab team. You're deciding where the entire company points its experimental capacity. If you want to be at the bench, this isn't for you. This is also explicitly a pre-IND role. You own the science from discovery through the IND-enabling package. The platform can model almost any aspect of human immunology. That breadth is both the opportunity and the challenge: the hard part isn't what we can do, it's deciding what we should do. If you're energized by that kind of high-stakes prioritization, this is the role for you.

Requirements

An acknowledged leader in human immunology. Your career has been dedicated to understanding the human immune system in health and disease.
You have a PhD in a related biomedical or bioengineering discipline, with credible experience across numerous sub-fields of immunology (e.g., cancer, autoimmunity, infectious disease, allergy) and broad knowledge across innate and adaptive immunity.
A scientific communicator. You can write a paper, give a keynote, draft a patent strategy, and brief a CEO with equal fluency. You turn data into narrative and narrative into influence in the broader scientific community.
A pharma market expert. You know the major immunology drug discovery markets (immuno-oncology, vaccines, I&I, immunotoxicology) and the pipelines of every major player. You know which indications are heating up, which are crowded, and which are commoditized.
You understand small molecule, biologic, and cell therapy drug discovery, and where platform-fit is sharpest.
A pre-IND regulatory expert. You understand how the FDA operates at the discovery and translational stages: what data packages are best up to IND, what bridging studies look like, and how to present them.
VP-caliber. Opinionated, decisive, comfortable with high-stakes judgment calls. You can say "we are not going to do that, here's why" with the same conviction as "we are doing this, here's why."
Energized by the bet. You see human-first drug discovery as one of the most important shifts in pharmaceutical science in a generation, and you want to be the person calling the scientific shots.

Nice To Haves

Recognized voice in the field
Comfort with data-heavy drug discovery platforms or computational biology
Knowledge of NAMs or other advanced in vitro systems

Responsibilities

Aim the engine. Own the prioritization of therapeutic areas, indications, and targets.
Build the scientific roadmap that shapes what every other team works on.
Direct disease modeling with the R&D team. Determine which diseases get modeled, what those models need to look like, how they need to perform, and what readouts prove they are working.
Validate the science with the Platform team. As autonomous workcells come online, make sure the data makes biological sense and answers the right questions.
Pick the targets with the AI/ML team. Decide which disease targets our foundation models get pointed at, and serve as the scientific lead on benchmarking and validating model output.
Partner closely with Business Development. Identify collaboration and partnership opportunities, shape how the platform is positioned commercially, build BD decks and marketing materials, and prioritize the indications and targets with the strongest commercial leverage.
Drive in-licensing of drug assets. Ensure strong platform-drug fit with proof points that turn the platform from a data engine into a drug discovery engine.
Build the public scientific narrative. Lead the strategy behind patents, publications, white papers, blog posts, conference talks, and every external signal that establishes Parallel Bio as the scientific authority on human-first drug discovery.
Decide our internal drug discovery programs. As the platform matures, choose which diseases we pursue ourselves.