Research Scientist, Applied Research
Chai Discovery
San Francisco, CA · Posted November 4, 2026
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November 2026
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Pay compared with the market
This listing does not state pay. Across 73 open research scientist listings that state pay, the middle half runs $168,000 to $310,000 and the median is $240,000.
Listed pay is what employers advertise, not what people are paid.
How AI is used in this kind of work
AI use among medical scientists, except epidemiologists is little observed so far. Measured exposure for medical scientists, except epidemiologists: 4% (little observed).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
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About the job
About Chai Discovery
Chai Discovery builds the computer-aided design suite for molecules. Eli Lilly , GSK , Pfizer , Bristol Myers Squibb , argenx and Novartis all use Chai to power drug discovery programs. AI is reinventing life sciences the same way it reinvented software engineering, and our team is building that future.
We train frontier models that learn the underlying foundations of biochemical structure and interaction. We pair this with a computational workspace to iterate on molecules from idea to medicine, helping scientists move faster and develop medicines beyond the reach of existing methods.
We value diverse perspectives and are ready to find greatness in unexpected places.
About the role
We are hiring research scientists to improve the real-world performance of our foundation models. The work involves planning targeted data generation campaigns, designing evals that accurately measure model performance, and formulating post-training recipes aimed at making models useful for real drug discovery problems.
We prioritize simple, robust methods over intricate solutions built for narrow problems. We particularly value researchers who can formalize messy biological problems using methods from other fields.
You will work in tight loops with our pre-training researchers, research engineers and science team. Your work will ship fast and you'll see your results reach real therapeutic programs across industry.
About you
We look for technical depth paired with interest in the underlying biology. Biological background is not required. All of the following are positive signals:
Published research in machine learning for protein, antibody, or small-molecule modelling.
Fluency in the technical details of protein language, structure prediction, and design models (AlphaFold, RFDiffusion, ProteinMPNN, ESM, etc).
Strong quantitative background (CS, math, or physics), particularly in probability, statistics, and machine learning.
Deep software engineering expertise, with experience working in large codebases.
We are happy to bet on rising talent.
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 and promote a culture of high velocity and ownership. We compensate our team accordingly.