Demo

Founding AI Medicinal Chemist

Oakwell Hampton Group
Palo Alto, CA Full Time
POSTED ON 7/29/2026
AVAILABLE BEFORE 8/27/2026

The Opportunity

We are an early-stage, well-funded startup building the foundational data layer that every AI drug discovery model will run on. Backed by elite tech executives and partnering with frontier AI labs and global pharma, we are operating at the most exciting intersection in biotech today: AI and drug discovery.


We are looking for a highly driven, early-career medicinal chemist to join our founding team. If you have a strong sense of ownership, a "ready to fight" startup mentality, and want to escape big pharma bureaucracy to build infrastructure that truly matters, this is your seat.


The Role

As a Founding Medicinal Chemist, you will bridge the gap between hands-on drug synthesis and frontier AI model training. You will ensure that the chemical and biological data feeding our models is world-class, translating complex scientific needs into precise data specifications.


Key Responsibilities:

  • Own Data Quality End-to-End: Personally examine, validate, and enforce extreme scientific rigor at every stage of our chemistry data generation pipelines.
  • Evaluate Frontier AI: Stress-test and evaluate Large Language Models (LLMs) on complex medicinal chemistry reasoning, reaction mechanisms, and structure-activity relationship (SAR) tasks.
  • Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Work directly with AI/ML engineers to refine data generation pipelines and improve model accuracy in the chemical domain.


The Ideal Profile (Who You Are):

  • Elite Academic Foundation: You hold a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, or a closely related field from a Top 20 university.
  • The "Builder" Mentality: You are young, hungry, detail-obsessed, and thrive in fast-moving, high-uncertainty environments. You take absolute ownership of your work.
  • Industry Experience (Big Plus): You bring 1 to 5 years of hands-on pharma or biotech experience in hit-to-lead optimization, SAR, and small molecule drug discovery.
  • AI Training Experience (Big Plus): You have experience working as a Subject Matter Expert (SME), AI Tutor, or evaluator training frontier models (e.g., at companies like Scale AI, xAI, Mercor, Handshake, or Surge AI).


Why Join Us?

  • Founding Team Impact: You will be early at a company that is going to be massive, holding real equity and making a real impact.
  • Meaningful Mission: Your work will directly train the AI models that discover the next breakthrough drugs, fundamentally changing how therapeutics are developed.


Apply If: You're a scientist who is tired of big pharma bureaucracy and wants to build the future of AI-driven chemistry.

Salary : $160,000 - $200,000

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