---
title: 'Head of Discovery at Output Biosciences'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-discovery-output-biosciences-new-york-6t1706k1y2nz'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-16'
---

# Head of Discovery at Output Biosciences

- **Company:** Output Biosciences
- **Location:** New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-06-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-16
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/output/f3cddff5-5847-4baa-a9fc-403d919eba47

## Job description

## The Role

Output has built a biological reasoning model that understands biology at the scale and complexity life actually operates. Our model independently learned the principles of molecular interactions, opening up drug treatments that were previously impossible. We're already generating therapies that traditional approaches cannot reach. The hardest problems in both AI and biology are being solved here, and there is room for you to own one. Output is currently in stealth, operated by a team of repeat founders and biotech veterans with multiple exits in AI x Bio, and backed by top-tier VCs including Y Combinator. You are a drug hunter. You own the scientific strategy behind Output's drug discovery programs. You help select targets for our pipeline, evaluate what the models generate, and make the scientific decisions that advance candidates from computational generation to real-world testing.

- You will identify and evaluate therapeutic targets, building the scientific rationale for which programs to pursue and why
- You will analyze model outputs to assess drug candidates, evaluating biological plausibility, therapeutic potential, and readiness for advancement
- You will prioritize candidates and make scientific go/no-go decisions, advancing the strongest compounds through the discovery pipeline
- You will manage CRO partnerships for candidate synthesis and biological testing, designing experiments that validate or refine drug design hypotheses
- You will work closely with the founders and model team, bringing drug discovery expertise to model evaluation and development priorities
- You will stay current with target biology, disease mechanisms, and the clinical landscape across relevant therapeutic areas

## About You

- You have a PhD in pharmacology, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, computational biology, or a related field with 5+ years of drug discovery experience in pharma or biotech, or equivalent depth through extensive industry experience
- You have hands-on experience advancing drug discovery programs through pipeline stages: target selection, hit identification, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization
- You have demonstrated experience evaluating drug candidates and making scientific go/no-go decisions on real programs
- You are comfortable working directly with computational model outputs and analyzing AI-generated molecular data
- You have strong scientific judgment across target biology, disease mechanisms, and therapeutic modalities
- You can build and defend a scientific rationale, communicate across disciplines, and make decisions under uncertainty

Bonus Points

- You have experience with AI-driven drug discovery or computational drug design tools
- You have experience managing CRO relationships for synthesis and biological testing
- You have experience across multiple therapeutic areas or modalities, including small molecules and peptides
- You have a track record of advancing compounds into preclinical or clinical development
- You have programming skills in Python, with the ability to work with data analysis tools and model outputs hands-on
- You have publications at top-tier venues or relevant drug discovery and medicinal chemistry journals

## What We Offer

We encourage new and different ideas, creativity and contrarian thinking

- Healthy feedback focused environment to help you strive. Leadership will have high expectations, regularly share constructive feedback, support you and help you grow, and welcome receiving feedback and ideas from you
- You own your day-to-day management. What we care about is that we all hit our milestones
- Competitive salary and equity in a growing, well-funded startup
- Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage

## Our Values

❤️ Heart: We foster a culture of ownership. We are assembling a team of individuals who are passionate and take pride in their contributions. 🏆 Excellence: We have an unwavering commitment to excellence and continuously challenge ourselves to reach the highest standards. 🚀 Practicality: We value practicality and results-oriented thinking. We are committed to making a tangible impact on the lives of patients and the broader community. 📣 Honesty: We place a high value on honesty and directness. We firmly believe in addressing issues as they arise, in an open and transparent manner. 🎮 Fun: We believe that life is too short to not have fun. Our goal is to create a workplace that is fun, engaging, rewarding and fulfilling.

## What We Offer

- We encourage new and different ideas, creativity and contrarian thinking
- Healthy feedback focused environment to help you strive - leadership will have high expectations, regularly share constructive feedback, support you and help you grow, and welcome receiving feedback and ideas from you
- You own your day-to-day management. What we care about is that we all hit our milestones
- Competitive salary and equity in a growing, well-funded startup
- Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage

## About Output Biosciences

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Output Biosciences is pioneering Biologically-Aware Generative AI to understand complex biological systems and generate breakthrough medicines.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage, Y Combinator S21 batch)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Mirella Mashiach (Co-Founder) and other repeat founders of AI-driven biotech startups

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Biotechnology Research, Generative AI, Drug Discovery
- **Target customers**: B2B (pharmaceutical and biotech companies), Enterprise (research institutions)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "Teaching Generative AI the Language of Biology" to advance humanity to a new level of health by building Large Biological Models that can generate breakthrough medicines.

## Products & Services
- **Large Biological Models**: A new generative AI architecture designed to handle the extremely long, nonlinear, fragmented, and high-dimensional data of biological systems. These models aim to transform the way diseases are diagnosed, treated, and prevented.
- **Biologically-Aware Generative AI Platform**: A proprietary platform that understands complex biological systems, enabling the generation of novel therapeutic candidates and insights.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – Seed round (2023) and Pre-Seed round (2021) from Y Combinator and other investors; exact amounts not disclosed.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (Summer 2021 batch)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 50% YoY (from 2 to 4 employees); monthly website traffic grew 56.9% month-over-month and 98.3% year-over-year; 9 active job postings as of mid-2025, indicating aggressive hiring.

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: Biotechnology Research, Generative AI, Drug Discovery
- Target customers: B2B (pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, research institutions)
- Mission or purpose statement: Teaching Generative AI the Language of Biology to understand complex biological systems and generate breakthrough medicines.

## Products & Services
- **Large Biological Models (LBMs)**: A proprietary generative AI architecture that can process the extremely long, nonlinear, fragmented, and high-dimensional data of biological systems. These models are designed to generate breakthrough medicines and transform the way diseases are diagnosed, treated, and prevented. Type: AI/Software platform.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – Pre-Seed round (August 2021) and Seed round (January 2023) from Y Combinator and other investors; exact amounts not disclosed.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (Summer 2021 batch)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 50% YoY (from 2 to 4 employees); monthly website traffic grew 56.9% month-over-month and 98.3% year-over-year; 9 active job postings as of mid-2025, indicating a significant hiring push.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Novel AI Architecture**: Their generative AI is specifically designed for biological data, which is "extremely long, nonlinear, fragmented, and high dimensional" — a fundamental challenge that standard LLMs cannot handle.
- **Founding Team Expertise**: Repeat founders of AI-driven biotech startups, with backgrounds in computational systems biology, nonlinear dynamics, and medicine.
- **Y Combinator Backing**: Part of the prestigious Y Combinator Summer 2021 batch, providing strong validation and network effects.
- **First-Mover in Biologically-Aware AI**: They are pioneering a new category of AI models that are "biologically-aware," a significant differentiator from general-purpose AI models applied to biology.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Building and scaling their core team of researchers and engineers to develop Large Biological Models. They are actively hiring across machine learning, computational biology, and interpretability roles.
- **Direction for growth**: Expanding from research to generating breakthrough medicines, with a focus on pretraining, molecular generation, and model interpretability.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture highlights**: A mission-driven environment focused on making a tangible impact on human health. The company emphasizes "impatience to see how your work improves people's lives."
- **Remote/hybrid/office policy**: Hybrid model with a strong New York HQ presence. Some roles are listed as "New York HQ" with a preference for in-person collaboration, while others (e.g., Machine Learning Engineer, Senior Computational Biologist) are available as remote positions.
- **Notable perks or engineering culture**: A small, tight-knit team (currently 4 employees) with a high degree of ownership and impact. The company is at the forefront of generative AI and biology, offering the chance to work on fundamental research problems. They are actively hiring for 9 roles, including research interns and senior computational biologists, indicating a strong commitment to building a world-class R&D team.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Expanding the core team across machine learning, computational biology, and interpretability. They are focused on pretraining large biological models and developing methods to understand and generate biological sequences.
- **Direction for growth**: Moving from foundational research to generating breakthrough medicines, with a clear pipeline toward therapeutic applications.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture highlights**: Mission-driven, high-impact environment where "impatience to see how your work improves people’s lives" is a core value. The team is small (4 employees) and collaborative, offering significant ownership and visibility.
- **Remote/hybrid/office policy**: Hybrid model with a strong New York HQ presence. Some roles (e.g., Machine Learning Engineer, Senior Computational Biologist) are listed as remote, while others are NYC-based. The company has two offices in New York.
- **Notable perks or engineering culture**: Opportunity to work at the cutting edge of generative AI and biology. The company is expanding its core team and has 9 active job postings, including research intern positions, making it accessible to new graduates as well as experienced professionals. The tech stack includes Python, TensorFlow, and PyTorch.

## Sources
1. [outputbio.com](https://outputbio.com/)
2. [ycombinator.com](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/output)
3. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/output-biosciences)
4. [jobs.ashbyhq.com](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/output)

## Other roles at Output Biosciences

- [Member of the Technical Staff, Pretraining](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-the-technical-staff-pretraining-output-biosciences-new-york-8m06djybaawf) — New York, NY
- [Member of the Technical Staff, Generative](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-the-technical-staff-generative-output-biosciences-new-york-d7h39gzbcpqj) — New York, NY
- [Member of the Technical Staff, Biological Data](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-the-technical-staff-biological-data-output-biosciences-new-york-6z41abthyzrk) — New York, NY
- [Member of the Technical Staff, Cheminformatics](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-the-technical-staff-cheminformatics-output-biosciences-new-york-d0azrngcqn26) — New York, NY
- [Member of the Technical Staff, Interpretability](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-the-technical-staff-interpretability-output-biosciences-new-york-vnnp41pj7x8r) — New York, NY
- [Software Engineer, Agents](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-agents-output-biosciences-new-york-bjkfjnfqzp3t) — New York, NY
- [AI Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-technical-recruiter-output-biosciences-remote-x12g46g758gq)
- [Head of Biology](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-biology-output-biosciences-new-york-tjktcbm9rvtd) — New York, NY