Head of Business Development

Radical Numerics•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

Radical Numerics is an AI research lab building general biological intelligence. Our mission is to master the code of life, and our purpose is to reduce human suffering. Our team created Evo, and started the field of generative genomics. Our work was featured on the cover of Science, and presented by our CEO on the main stage of TED2025. Evo was used to create the first AI gene therapy tool CRISPR-Cas9, and the first AI whole genome from scratch. Evo 2, featured in Nature, is the largest fully open source AI project across any domain. Radical Numerics is bringing the rigor of distributed systems, model architecture, and numerics research to the challenges of biology. We’ve redesigned the foundation model training stack to turn the world’s raw scientific data (e.g. biological sequences, experiments, and physical processes), into intelligible, generative models that can expand and accelerate what humanity can understand, design, and cure. The same generative breakthroughs that enable life-saving cures also lowers the barrier to creating engineered threats and AI-generated bioweapons. We believe these forces are inseparable. Radical Numerics was founded to develop both the power to design and the responsibility to defend.

Requirements

You have personally led and closed complex life sciences partnerships, and can explain what you did from first substantive conversation through signature.
You have relationships with decision-makers in at least one of our core markets and know how to build credibility in accounts where you do not.
You understand how large life sciences companies fund and approve work across research, business development, legal, procurement, data governance, and executive leadership.
You are technically fluent enough to understand what our models can do, identify where a proposed commitment outruns the evidence, and represent Radical credibly with scientific leaders.
You can distinguish a serious commercial opportunity from an interesting research conversation, and you are willing to end the latter before it consumes the team.
You are comfortable creating deal structures and internal processes before there is a standard playbook.
You know how to structure and negotiate platform, discovery, licensing, or co-development agreements, including the tradeoffs among upfront economics, intellectual property, exclusivity, data rights, milestones, and downstream participation.
You have worked alongside a scientific or technical lead and know how to divide ownership without confusing the customer or undermining your counterpart.

Nice To Haves

Excitement about building a generational company and pioneering how AI is commercialized in life sciences.

Responsibilities

Originate and close partnerships across pharma, diagnostics, and synthetic biology.
Own the commercial workstream from qualification through signature, alongside a product lead who owns technical scope and scientific execution.
Map how each account makes decisions: who wants the work, who can fund it, whose approval is required, and what could prevent it from moving.
Qualify opportunities before they consume research time.
Establish whether there is a real budget, a decision-maker, and a plausible path from technical evaluation to a funded program.
Structure research collaborations, platform-access agreements, licenses, and co-development partnerships.
Negotiate economics, intellectual property, data rights, field restrictions, governance, and downstream rights with company leadership and counsel.
Build account strategy with product leads. They determine what we can commit to technically; you determine what the commitment should be worth and what we need in return.
Work with our Head of Data Acquisition when data access forms part of a broader commercial partnership.
Establish the qualification, account-planning, and deal-review practices the company will use as partnership volume grows, and build the business development team over time.
Coordinate with our Head of Biodefense when a government partnership includes a commercial component.