Forward Deployed Engineer

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

You will be the technical face of Chai Discovery for our biopharma partners. You’ll embed with customer teams, be the conduit between their scientific workflows and Chai technology, stand up systems, and push through anything that blocks adoption. Your work ensures that every model we ship generates real value at the bench and in silico.

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 seeking a strong engineer with a deep desire to work on this frontier technology. You should have:

Technical foundation:

• Degree in Computer Science, Bioinformatics, or a related field

• Proficient in Python and one additional scripting language (Bash, Go, or similar)

• Bonus: familiarity with bioinformatics pipelines

Customer-facing skills:

• 2+ years in solutions engineering, technical account management, or similar customer-facing role

• Able to translate between bench scientists, IT administrators, and Chai’s internal ML engineers

• Strong written and verbal communication; confident running remote trainings and on-site workshops

Execution & problem-solving:

• Experience gathering requirements, scoping integrations, and delivering on tight timelines

• Skilled at debugging data-integration issues and performance bottlenecks in live environments

• Track record of documenting best practices and driving product feedback into the engineering roadmap

Mindset:

• Bias for action—comfortable owning ambiguous problems end-to-end

• Thrive in a fast-moving startup, adapting priorities as customer needs evolve

• Willingness to travel occasionally for key deployments or partner meetings

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.