
Product Lead - Discovery at Radical Numerics (San Francisco, CA)
Radical Numerics· San Francisco, CA·
Role details
Job description
ABOUT US
Radical Numerics radicalnumerics.ai is an AI research lab building general biological intelligence. Our mission is to master the code of life, and our purpose is to reduce human suffering.
Our team created Evo, and started the field of generative genomics. Our work was featured on the cover of Science science.org/science.ado9336, and presented by our CEO on the main stage of TED2025 youtube.com/watch Evo was used to create the first AI gene therapy tool CRISPR-Cas9, and the first AI whole genome biorxiv.org/2025.09.12.675911v1 from scratch. Evo 2 nature.com/s41586-026-10176-5, featured in Nature, is the largest fully open source AI project across any domain.
Radical Numerics is bringing the rigor of distributed systems, model architecture, and numerics research to the challenges of biology. We’ve redesigned the foundation model training stack to turn the world’s raw scientific data (e.g. biological sequences, experiments, and physical processes), into intelligible, generative models that can expand and accelerate what humanity can understand, design, and cure.
The same generative breakthroughs that enable life-saving cures also lowers the barrier to creating engineered threats and AI-generated bioweapons. We believe these forces are inseparable. Radical Numerics was founded to develop both the power to design and the responsibility to defend.
ABOUT THE ROLE
You own the discovery side of our business. You identify where in pharma orgs our deals get funded, including discovery, data science, and therapeutic areas.
Our science team owns the model itself. You decide what we build on top of it for target discovery and validation. The people who evaluate us are genetics and computational biology groups, and they don't move without evidence, so you will have a lot of say in which benchmarks we run.
You should be comfortable building prototypes. You are paired with an applications engineer who builds production product, and you go into partner meetings together.
You will carry a commercial target from early on.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Decide which applications of the model matter for target identification and validation, and what we build first.
- Originate and close partnerships with pharma discovery organizations. You are measured on committed contract value and on partners using the product week to week.
- Find the internal champion, learn which budget funds a deal like ours, and give that champion what they need to get it approved.
- Write the specs your engineer builds from, and stay with a partnership after signature
- Tell our science team which benchmarks would move your deals, and make the case for running them.
- Set pricing and structure with the Head of Product, and run the negotiation with our legal team.
- Ensure key partners renew and expand.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- Fluency in human genetics. GWAS, fine-mapping, burden testing, variant-to-function work. You can read a variant effect benchmark, tell whether the result means anything, and say so in front of a partner's chief scientist.
- Breadth across the discovery workflow. You know what happens to a target after it is nominated, what evidence moves it forward, and what gets one killed.
- You know how a large discovery organization buys. Which budget funds a platform deal, who else is competing for it, and where a collaboration dies internally.
- You have sold to pharma R&D and carried a number. Deals you closed yourself, to scientific buyers.
- You are comfortable as the only commercial person in a room of scientists, on both sides of the table.
- You want to own revenue.
NICE TO HAVE
- You have worked inside a pharma discovery organization.
- You founded a company, or were one of the first ten people at one.
- Published work in genetics, genomics, or computational biology.
Radical Numerics is committed to equal employment opportunity and does not discriminate in any employment opportunities or practices based on an individual's race, color, creed, gender (including gender identity and gender expression), religion (all aspects of religious beliefs, observance or practice, including religious dress or grooming practices), marital status, registered domestic partner status, age, national origin or ancestry (including language use restrictions and possession of a driver’s license issued under California Vehicle Code section 12801.9), natural hair, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, medical condition (including cancer or a record or history of cancer, and genetic characteristics), sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or related medical condition), genetic information, sexual orientation, military and veteran status or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state, or local laws. It also prohibits unlawful discrimination based on the perception that anyone has any of those characteristics, or is associated with a person who has or is perceived as having any of those characteristics.
Radical Numerics participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S.
Why work at Radical Numerics
- Mission-Driven: The company is tackling "the most important scientific and technological challenge of our time" — mastering the code of life to cure disease, engineer new medicines, and defend against biological threats.
- Cutting-Edge Technical Work: Engineers and researchers work on frontier AI challenges including distributed systems, model architecture, numerics research, long-context models, and mechanistic interpretability — all applied to biological data.
- On-Site Culture: The vast majority of roles (10 of 11 listed) are on-site in San Francisco, with some roles also available in Tokyo. This suggests a strong in-person collaboration culture.
- Interdisciplinary Team: Brings together AI researchers, systems engineers, computational biologists, and scientists from institutions including Stanford, MIT, and Google DeepMind.
- High Ambition, Early Stage: With a $50M seed round and a small team, new hires have the opportunity to shape the company's technical direction and infrastructure from the ground up.
- Dual Focus on Impact and Responsibility: The company explicitly states that "the design lab and the defense lab need to be the same entity," offering engineers a chance to work on both creation and safeguarding of powerful technology.