About the role

Why Join

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.

What 10x Science is Solving

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 them.
• Before a drug candidate can advance to the clinic, scientists must deeply characterize the protein therapeutic to understand whether it will work.
• Today, that process takes months of manual, error-prone analysis. It is the bottleneck holding back the entire industry.
• Our AI-native platform automates it, giving drug developers the confidence to advance the right candidates and stop the wrong ones early.

The Team

We built the field of next-generation protein characterization out of Carolyn Bertozzi’s Nobel laureate lab at Stanford. No one had turned it into software until now.

• David (Co-Founder, CEO) is a Stanford postdoctoral scholar and Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellow who has spent 15+ years on the science this platform automates, with foundational publications across top scientific journals.
• Andrew (Co-Founder, COO) trained at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he built analytical tools pharma uses to understand how drugs bind their targets, before joining Bertozzi lab at Stanford.
• Vishnu (Co-Founder, CTO) is a 2x YC founder who was founding engineer at Nooks and helped scale them through Series B. You will report directly to Vishnu.

We are already working with multiple top-10 pharma companies and have enterprise contracts in motion. We are well-capitalized and focused on building.

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 founders on bare-metal, high-throughput, AI-native software that is already being deployed to top-10 pharmaceutical companies. This will be the highest-leverage work of your career. The systems you build will process data that no existing software can handle at required speed and accuracy. You will write fundamental algorithms, architect performance-critical infrastructure, and ship code reaching production weekly. The problems are genuinely hard and novel with direct impact on patients receiving better medicines faster. Reporting directly to CTO Vishnu.

Our Culture

We are a small team moving with extraordinary momentum building something never existed before on an aggressive timeline by design. We believe best work happens when exceptional people commit fully to a mission that matters operating with total ownership; pace becomes energy not fatigue. We seek people frustrated by bureaucracy/convention wanting to shape next era of scientific advancement matching commitment of founding team moving at highest velocity. We are committed to your personal/professional growth whether long-term career as founding member or starting your own company someday; we invest in your development supporting either path.

What You Will Do

• Build and own core modules of high-performance scientific computing platform from first principles
• Architect systems for throughput, correctness, scale across large complex datasets
• Work directly with founders translating deep scientific domain knowledge into production software
• Deploy to enterprise pharmaceutical customers iterating based on real-world feedback
• Make foundational technical decisions defining platform for years

First 90 Days

Ship production code in first week. Within first month own core module making architectural decisions with real consequences. No onboarding program; learn by building pair-programming founders deploying to customers counting on your work. Fast pace; real stakes day one.

You Will Succeed If You Have These Skills

Low-level systems architecture: Architect low-level systems in Rust or comfortable applying practical implementation skills across C, C++, Go.

2. Intuition for compute-performance tradeoffs: Know when to apply zero-time leverage techniques vs benchmarking compilers/GPUs pushing silicon limits.

Obsessed with interpretability: Deeply care about understanding system behavior reasons not just functionality.

4. Leverage best available tools: Adopt AI coding agents, CLI tooling etc., quickly incorporating new tools as competitive advantage. 5. Learn like a sponge: Absorb new domains quickly without ego; comfortable being wrong asking questions updating understanding real time.

What We Are Looking For

• Strong fundamentals in systems programming, algorithms, data structures
• Experience building fast software caring about low-level performance
• Comfort operating in ambiguity breaking down ill-defined problems shipping working solutions
• Drive/momentum seeking founding role for faster pace than corporate environments allow
• Intellectual curiosity about hard technical problems even outside current expertise

Nice to Have

• Experience with high-performance or scientific computing
• Familiarity with AI/ML infrastructure or numerical methods
• Prior experience at high-growth startup or early engineer

Compensation

Salary range $150K - $240K depending on qualifications/experience; exceptional senior/staff candidates may exceed range. Equity 0.5% - 2% with 12-month cliff & 4-year monthly vesting. 401(k) plan offered; opportunity to shape full benefits package as founding team member. This is a full-time W-2 position based in San Francisco Bay Area; visa sponsorship limited (O-1 only). 10x Science is an equal opportunity employer.

Skills listed on page:

• C++
• Go
• Rust
• Deep Learning
• Reinforcement learning (RL)
• Software Architecture