First Finance Hire
Join Chai Discovery as the first finance hire to manage financial operations and support strategic decisions in a fast-growing AI-driven startup.
Posted by employer 1 week ago
First seen on Joblaze 1 week ago
Last verified on the company career page 1 day ago
AI in the day-to-day
Chai builds AI models for drug discovery, enhancing life sciences research.
Not disclosed in this posting: compensation, years of experience, work arrangement, visa sponsorship.
Joblaze summary
In this role, the first finance hire at Chai Discovery will manage the entire financial operating system, ensuring accurate bookkeeping and effective cash forecasting. The position requires a blend of operational expertise and financial acumen, with a focus on improving systems and controls while preparing for audits. Ideal candidates are experienced in startup environments, possessing a generalist finance background that allows them to tackle both strategic and hands-on tasks. Chai Discovery is a fast-growing company at the intersection of AI and life sciences, emphasizing a culture of ownership and high velocity.
Joblaze insights
- Listed 9 days ago on Joblaze — tracked directly from Chai Discovery's career page.
- Chai Discovery has 15 other open roles including Software Engineer, Product, Security Lead, Forward-Deployed Scientist.
Quick facts
- What seniority level is this role?
- Chai Discovery targets mid-level candidates for this position.
- Is this full-time or contract?
- Full-time for this First Finance Hire role at Chai Discovery.
From the original posting
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.