First Finance Hire

Chai Discovery, Inc

• $110K — $130K *
Finance & Insurance
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of experience in finance roles, preferably in startups
  • Proficient understanding of financial operating systems and reporting
  • Experience with compliance and revenue recognition, particularly in pharma contracts
  • Strong financial modeling and cash forecasting skills
  • Tech-savvy, particularly in AI and workflow optimization
  • Demonstrated ability to work in fast-paced environments with minimal supervision
  • Ability to manage complex financial situations with clarity and precision

Responsibilities

  • Own and manage the financial operating system from end to end
  • Lead the monthly close process ensuring accuracy and efficiency
  • Develop and maintain financial models and cash forecasts
  • Implement reporting mechanisms to provide visibility into financials
  • Work closely with founders to streamline financial workflows
  • Ensure compliance with financial regulations and contracts
  • Collaborate across teams to identify and manage costs effectively

Benefits

  • Opportunity to work at the forefront of AI research and frontier biology
  • Collaborative culture with world-class professionals
  • Environment that fosters high velocity and ownership
  • Ability to impact the company's direction in a meaningful way
Full Job Description
About the role

We are making our first finance hire. Someone we can trust to own Chai's financial operating system end to end.

Chai is a small, fast-growing company with complex financial operations; heavy spend on compute and data acquisition; and pharmaceutical partnerships with complex revenue recognition and compliance requirements. We need someone who can make sure the machinery underneath the business is exceptionally well run, and give us the visibility to make good decisions as we scale.

You will own the quality of our books and close process, build a trusted view of where our money is going, and take over the financial model and cash forecast. You'll manage accounting and finance vendors, improve all systems and controls, and lead our audit readiness.

Once the foundations are in place, we expect your attention will turn towards strategic questions: allocating capital, modeling major investments, negotiating important relationships, and generally supporting key decisions as we grow.
About you

You are a financial generalist who combines operational rigor with strong financial judgment. You are sophisticated enough to understand the entire financial picture of the company, but hands-on enough to personally chase down a strange invoice, manage an accounting firm, negotiate a vendor renewal, or rebuild a cash forecast. Nothing is beneath you if it matters to the business.

You likely have meaningful experience inside a startup. You may have been an early finance hire or second-in-command at a high-growth technology company, come from strategic finance after rigorous training in banking, or started in accounting and grown into a broader role.

Most importantly, you own outcomes. When something important falls between functions, your instinct is to understand it, fix it, and build a system so it stays fixed. All with a mindset of making complexity disappear and avoiding unnecessary process.
We offer

The opportunity to work at the vanguard of AI research and frontier biology, with world-class people, on a mission that matters. We protect & promote a culture of high velocity and ownership. We compensate our team accordingly.

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