Design Engineer

Chai Discovery; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Culture of high velocity and ownership

Job summary

Chai Discovery in San Francisco is looking for a Design Engineer. In this unique role, you will define interactions for advanced drug design models.

You will be responsible for owning the entire design process, from initial sketches through to production code, focusing on simplicity and effectiveness for scientists. Strong product design experience is crucial, especially in creating AI-first products. You can expect to work with a talented team in a fast-paced environment, with highly competitive compensation.

Qualifications

• 5+ years designing exceptional products with end-to-end ownership.
• Ability to build from sketches to production code.
• Experience designing AI-first products.

Responsibilities

• Define how scientists interact with drug design models.
• Own the interaction paradigm from research to shipped interfaces.
• Collaborate closely with researchers and scientists.

Skills

Product Design

Figma

AI-first Product Development

Data Visualization

Job description

About Chai Discovery

Chai is a research lab working on AI to unlock biology. Our models design new molecules for new medicines. We are changing how biologists develop drugs, just as language models are changing how engineers write code. Our vision is a design suite for molecules, with applications across life sciences, agriculture, materials and beyond.

Our founders have been at the forefront of this field from the beginning. We are backed by Thrive, General Catalyst, OpenAI, Dimension and other tier‑one investors. We partner with global life sciences companies like Eli Lilly on deals that are transforming industry.

We are known for talent density, rigorous research and pace of execution.

About the role

As Chai's first design engineer, you'll define how scientists interact with the most advanced drug design models in the world, and then build it. This is a design-and-build role: you own the interaction paradigm end to end, from research and low‑fi sketches through polished, shipped interfaces in real code.

Molecular biology is a cluttered, dense, deeply technical domain, and your job is to make it feel obvious. A great model needs the right product around it to be useful, and right now the product is what limits the model, not the other way around, so the design surface is wide open.

This is a chance to define the interaction paradigm for molecular design from scratch, on tools that scientists find indispensable, in a tight loop with the researchers and scientists who use them. Our models have moved beyond structure prediction into real therapeutic engineering, and we've only just begun. You'll work alongside a craft‑obsessed team of micro‑pessimists and macro‑optimists.

About you

We index on taste, range, and the rare ability to both design and ship. We're looking for someone who gets obsessed with hard problems and sweats the details. We look for:

• 5+ years designing exceptional products, with a portfolio showing end‑to‑end ownership of complex tools built for specialized domain experts
• The ability to build what you design: comfortable moving from sketch to Figma to interactive prototype to production front‑end code, and fluent talking code with engineers
• Experience designing AI‑first products that break the mold and do new things in new ways
• A bias for simplicity and minimalism in highly technical domains
• A clear communicator who can articulate design decisions and synthesize complex science for cross‑functional audiences, and a sharp listener who pulls the best ideas and the smallest details into the work

You're excited to dive into molecular biology, drug discovery, and AI/ML. A background in biology is not required, and what makes the difference is craft, curiosity, and grit. Data visualization, data science, or scientific domain experience is a bonus.

We offer

The opportunity to work at the leading edge of AI research, with world‑class people, on a mission that matters. We protect & promote a culture of high velocity and ownership. We offer highly competitive compensation.