Software Engineer, Product

About Chai Discovery

Chai Discovery is re-architecting drug discovery by building frontier AI foundation models to design molecules.

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

We’re looking to add a few members to our team of scientists and engineers, who obsess over creating the most powerful AI models for antibody discovery, and turning them into products that can transform how medicines are made.

About the role

As a Product Software Engineer at Chai you’ll pair modern front-end frameworks with robust back-end services to let scientists query models, visualize structures, and manage data without leaving the browser. You’ll collaborate closely with designers, ML researchers, and wet-lab teams to turn complex science into polished, reliable software that accelerates drug discovery. These roles involve developing innovative, user-friendly web interfaces for computational molecular design.

At Chai, we’re entering a pivotal stage. After years of foundational R&D, our models are moving beyond protein structure prediction and into real-world therapeutic engineering. We're now tasking our AI models on a broad spectrum of drug development challenges, at an exciting scale of wet-lab validation.

This is not a typical role — it’s a chance to push the boundaries of drug discovery by building some of the most advanced AI drug design models ever built.

About you

We’re looking for a mission-driven engineer who wants to define the gold standard for AI-powered drug-discovery products. You should have:

Software experience and product mindset:

• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent experience) in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field

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

• Proven experience in product development and design (specific requirements will vary by role)

• Proven track record collaborating with product managers and designers to turn Figma frames into pixel-perfect, accessible UIs

• 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

What we offer

• Frontier technology: we’re developing the next frontier of AI-driven drug discovery that will fundamentally change how new therapeutics are created.

• World-class team: opportunity to work with world-renowned leaders in the AI x biology and technology ecosystem who have created some of the most impactful advancements.

• Highly competitive compensation: we offer highly competitive salary, equity package, and healthcare and wellness benefits.

• Velocity and ownership: we move incredibly fast, which means continuous learning and career growth opportunities are a guarantee. Every team member owns a significant slice of the roadmap.

• Strong team culture: Collaborative and supportive startup culture in a small and high-energy team who are guided by our mission to increase the efficiency of creating new medicines and positively impact millions of lives.