The AI-native platform for next-generation protein characterization. Backed by Y Combinator.
About the role
You will join a three-person founding team and build the core platform from the ground up. You will pair-program directly with the founders on bare-metal, high-throughput, AI-native software that is already being deployed to top-10 pharmaceutical companies.
What they're looking for
- 2. Intuition for compute-performance tradeoffs. You have a sense for when to apply zero-parameter, zero-time leverage (XSA, Partial RoPE, Late QAT, etc.) versus forcing the silicon to reveal its absolute limits by benchmarking compilers and GPUs
- 3. Obsessed with interpretability. You care deeply about understanding why a system behaves the way it does, not just that it works
- 5. Learn like a sponge. You absorb new domains quickly and without ego. You are comfortable being wrong, asking questions, and updating your understanding in real time
- • Strong fundamentals in systems programming, algorithms, and data structures
- • Experience building software that has to be fast: you have a track record of caring about performance at a low level
- • Comfort operating in ambiguity: you can take an ill-defined problem, break it down, and ship a working solution
More about this role
You will be founding engineer #1 or #2 at a company that is already selling to the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. That is rare at this stage. The code you write will directly determine whether a drug candidate advances or gets stopped: decisions worth hundreds of millions of dollars to our customers and, downstream, the patients waiting for those medicines.
You will pair-program with the founders on hard, novel problems at the intersection of high-performance computing, scientific algorithms, and AI. The founding team has 15+ years of domain expertise in the science our software automates. You will not be guessing at requirements or building to a spec handed down from a PM. No scientific background is required. We will teach you everything you need to know about the domain. What we cannot teach is the drive to move with urgency and the desire to build something that matters.
10x Science (YC W26) develops frontier AI models with deep memory to redefine how scientists understand and engineer biology across the life sciences, starting with drug development.
- AI-powered drug discovery is flooding the pipeline with new candidates faster than the industry can evaluate...
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