Design Engineer

About Chai Discovery

Chai is a research lab working on generative models for molecular design. We are building AI infrastructure to engineer new medicines with speed and precision. The world’s largest pharmaceutical companies—including Eli Lilly https://endpoints.news/eli-lilly-chai-discovery-sign-ai-software-deal/, Pfizer https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2026/06/04/why-pfizer-and-eli-lilly-are-betting-on-this-13-billion-ai-drug-discovery-startup/, and Novartis https://www.chaidiscovery.com/news/novartis-partnership—have started adopting our platform across their organizations.

Our mission is to unlock progress towards better cures and better science, and we see countless interesting problems on the road ahead. We are known for talent density, rigorous research and pace of execution.

Our founders have been at the forefront of this field from the beginning. We are backed by Sequoia, Index, Thrive, General Catalyst, Dimension, OpenAI and others.

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.

Nobody has fully defined what it means to design a medicine on a computer, so this category of software is yours to invent.

Molecular biology is a cluttered, dense, deeply technical domain, and your job is to make it feel obvious and intuitive. Molecular structures are some of the most striking visuals in science, and the product should live up to them: visual and aesthetic craft matters. A great model needs the right product around it to be useful, and right now the product provides just as much leverage as the models do - the design surface is wide open.

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 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 - 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.