Business Operations

present of AI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Frontier AI is seeking its first dedicated business operations hire in San Francisco to bridge commercial negotiation, cost control and hands-on office/people tasks. You will oversee major contracts and right-size compute spend while coordinating an office move and supporting recruiting efforts.

A strong candidate has run programs inside a company, can build a financial model and negotiate from it, and is comfortable taking initiative rather than waiting for the perfect plan.

Qualifications

• Experience building financial models and negotiating from them.
• Ability to manage complex commercial tasks and vendor relationships.
• Strong operational capability for hands-on tasks (office moves, recruiting support).

Responsibilities

• Negotiate major contracts and align compute spend with business goals.
• Own small-to-mid scale operational projects and supplier decisions.
• Coordinate office moves and support recruiting as needed.

Skills

Contract modeling

Negotiation

Cost optimization

Job description

Operations · San Francisco office · FullTime · Mid level

This is the first dedicated business operations hire, reporting into a fast-moving AI drug discovery company. The work swings between big commercial tasks, like negotiating major contracts and right-sizing compute spend, and hands-on jobs like an office move or helping with recruiting. A strong candidate has run things inside a company before, can build a financial model and negotiate from it, and picks up the phone instead of waiting for a perfect plan.

How it fits the AI era

AI can speed up much of the analysis, drafting and research behind this work, so one person can cover more ground. What stays human is judgment about which problems matter, negotiating with suppliers and partners, earning trust with founders and leaders, and knowing when an AI answer should not be trusted. The role also sits close to compute costs, which are a core business issue for a company training large models.

How it builds AI experience

Working here would give close exposure to how a company that trains large molecular models manages compute, vendors and partner deals with big pharma. Someone could also build experience using AI tools day to day for modeling, research and process design. To prepare, a candidate can practice using AI assistants on real contracts, budgets and workflows, and learn the basics of how model training costs work.

Worth showing

• Owned outcomes inside a startup
• Contract modeling and negotiation
• Cost and supplier decisions
• Building systems that last
• Using AI with sound judgment

This is our own read, written from the employer's posting and the company's Spotlight. The employer's posting is the source of truth for the role.

About Chai Discovery

Frontier AI foundation models and computer-aided design suite to predict and reprogram biochemical molecules, per the company.