First Finance Hire

Chaidiscovery
San Francisco office, US

Who this role is best for

A natural match if you have experience in startup finance and managing complex AI-related contracts.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with startup finance experience and a background in AI or biotech contracts
    — “pharmaceutical partnerships with complex contracts, revenue recognition, and compliance requirements”
  • Individuals who have built financial models and managed cash forecasts for high-growth companies
    — “take over the financial model and cash forecast”
  • Professionals who thrive in small teams and have a history of streamlining financial processes
    — “making complexity disappear and avoiding unnecessary process”

Things to consider

  • The role involves a high level of ownership and responsibility from day one
    — “someone we can trust to own Chai's financial operating system end to end”
  • There is a need for someone who can handle both strategic and operational finance tasks
    — “financial generalist sophisticated enough to own the whole machine and hands-on enough to fix any part of it yourself”

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience with AI compute costs and vendor management in your resume
    — “manage accounting and finance vendors, improving all systems around controls”
  • Emphasize your ability to identify and resolve financial issues proactively
    — “notices problems early and promptly drives them through to resolution”
  • Showcase your work in financial modeling for growth-stage companies
    — “modeling major investments and mapping out the financial implications of our decisions as we grow”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · MediumAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · Company

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • own financial operating system
  • build trusted view of financials
  • lead audit readiness
Typical background
strategic financefinancial analyst

Skills & requirements

Required

Financial ModelingCash ForecastingFinancial AnalysisAccountingAudit Readiness

Preferred

AI FluencyComplex Financial Operations

Stack & domain

FinanceHealthcare

About the role

Original posting from Chaidiscovery via Ashby

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 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 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.

Source: Chaidiscovery careers (Ashby)

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