Business Operations

Chai Discovery Inc.; Santa Fe (NM); On-site; USD 100,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Chai Discovery is building frontier AI and biology capabilities, and is hiring our first Business Operations lead. You’ll own critical operational problems end to end, partnering with founders and leaders across functions to drive speed, rigor, and impact.

You’ll renegotiate major contracts, optimize compute spend, stand up new functions, and shepherd office moves or recruiting. You’ll create scalable systems and embed an ops rhythm from day one.

Qualifications

• Generalist with commercial instinct and bias for action.
• Experience negotiating major contracts and coordinating cross-functional initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Negotiate major contracts and optimize compute spend.
• Stand up new operational functions and lead office moves.
• Partner with founders and leaders to drive efficient processes.

Skills

Generalist mindset

Commercial instinct

Contract negotiation

Job description

About Chai Discovery

Chai Discovery builds the computer-aided design suite for molecules. Eli Lilly, GSK, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb, argenx and Novartis all use Chai to power drug discovery programs. AI is reinventing life sciences the same way it reinvented software engineering, and our team is building that future.

We train frontier models that learn the underlying foundations of biochemical structure and interaction. We pair this with a computational workspace to iterate on molecules from idea to medicine, helping scientists move faster and develop medicines beyond the reach of existing methods.

We value diverse perspectives and are ready to find greatness in unexpected places.

About the role

We are hiring our first Business Operations lead. Someone who can take hard problems at Chai and own them end to end. You’ll be a high-trust partner and problem solver to our founders and functional leaders, working wherever you’re most needed.

The work ranges from renegotiating major contracts and making sure our compute spend matches what we actually need, to standing up new functions, to taking ownership of an office move or helping out with recruiting. We need someone who’s happy doing all of it, from the unglamorous to the mission-critical, and who leaves better systems behind each time. Someone with a nose for friction and pain points that no one else notices, and who handles them without delay.

Over time, we expect to build an operations team with people embedded across key functions, so that running exceptionally well stays one of Chai’s real advantages. You’ll be at the center of that from day one, and for those who want it, the path leads to running a function.

About you

You are a generalist with commercial instinct and a bias for action. You’re sophisticated enough to build the model behind a major contract and negotiate it yourself, and hands-on enough to chase down quotes for an office move or organize a dinner for a visiting executive. You pick up the phone rather than waiting for a perfect plan, and you use AI to move faster without trusting it blindly.

You have operated, not just advised. You are comfortable in any room and on any call. You gain credibility quickly in unfamiliar territory.

You may have been in the founder’s office or an early business operations hire at a high-growth startup, owned cost and supplier decisions at a company known for operational rigor, worked as a deployment strategist, or started a company of your own. If you trained in consulting or banking, you’ve since spent real time owning outcomes inside a company. A technical or scientific background is a plus; biotech experience isn’t required.

We offer

The opportunity to work at the vanguard of AI research and frontier biology, with world-class people, on a mission that matters. We protect and promote a culture of high velocity and ownership. We compensate our team accordingly.