First Finance Hire

Chai Discovery Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Chai Discovery is seeking its first full-time finance hire to own the financial operating system end to end. You will manage books, close processes, and a trusted view of cash flow as we scale.

The role requires a generalist with hands-on ability to chase down invoices, manage accounting firms, renegotiate vendor terms, and rebuild forecasts. The ideal candidate has startup experience and a strategic finance mindset.

Qualifications

• Financial generalist with broad responsibility across accounting, FP&A, and controls.
• Startup experience at high-growth tech companies or finance teams.
• Background in strategic finance planning and capital allocation.

Responsibilities

• Own the quality of our books and close process.
• Build a trusted view of where our money is going and maintain cash forecast.
• Take over the financial model and cash forecast; manage vendors.
• Improve systems and controls; lead audit readiness.

Skills

Financial generalist

Startup experience

Strategic finance

Banking background

Job description

About Chai Discovery

Chai builds the design suite for molecules. We train frontier models that learn the underlying foundations of biochemical structure and interaction, so scientists can move faster and pursue targets that other methods cannot reach.

AI is reinventing life sciences the same way it reinvented software engineering, and Chai is at the forefront of this shift. Leading pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and Novartis are adopting our platform to power their drug discovery programs.

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

About the role

We are making our first finance hire. Someone we can trust to own Chai's financial operating system end to end.

Chai is a small, fast-growing company with complex financial operations; heavy spend on compute and data acquisition; and pharmaceutical partnerships with complex revenue recognition and compliance requirements. We need someone who can make sure the machinery underneath the business is exceptionally well run, and give us the visibility to make good decisions as we scale.

You will own the quality of our books and close process, build a trusted view of where our money is going, and take over the financial model and cash forecast. You'll manage accounting and finance vendors, improve all systems and controls, and lead our audit readiness.

Once the foundations are in place, we expect your attention will turn towards strategic questions: allocating capital, modeling major investments, negotiating important relationships, and generally supporting key decisions as we grow.

About you

You are a financial generalist who combines operational rigor with strong financial judgment. You are sophisticated enough to understand the entire financial picture of the company, but hands-on enough to personally chase down a strange invoice, manage an accounting firm, negotiate a vendor renewal, or rebuild a cash forecast. Nothing is beneath you if it matters to the business.

You likely have meaningful experience inside a startup. You may have been an early finance hire or second-in-command at a high-growth technology company, come from strategic finance after rigorous training in banking, or started in accounting and grown into a broader role.

Most importantly, you own outcomes. When something important falls between functions, your instinct is to understand it, fix it, and build a system so it stays fixed. All with a mindset of making complexity disappear and avoiding unnecessary process.

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 & promote a culture of high velocity and ownership. We compensate our team accordingly.