Founding Engineer
About the role
Founding engineer role at 10x Science, an YC-backed startup building an AI-native platform for high-throughput protein characterization. Early-stage, high-impact opportunity reporting to CTO and collaborating directly with the founders.
Responsibilities
- Build and own core modules of a high-performance scientific computing platform from first principles
- Architect systems for throughput, correctness, and scale across large and complex datasets
- Work directly with the founding team to translate deep scientific domain knowledge into production software
- Deploy to enterprise pharmaceutical customers and iterate based on real-world feedback
- Make foundational technical decisions that will define the platform for years to come
Qualifications
- Strong fundamentals in systems programming, algorithms, and data structures
- Experience building software that has to be fast: you have a track record of caring about performance at a low level
- Comfort operating in ambiguity: you can take an ill-defined problem, break it down, and ship a working solution
- Drive and momentum: you are looking for a founding role because you want to move faster than any corporate environment allows
- Intellectual curiosity about hard technical problems, even in domains outside your current expertise
Skills
Benefits
- 0.5% - 2% equity with 12-month cliff and 4-year vesting (monthly)
- 401(k) plan
- opportunity to shape the full benefits package as a founding team member
About 10x Science
The AI-native platform for next-generation protein characterization.
10x Science 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 ever. But before any of them 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 that cannot keep pace with discovery. Our AI-native platform automates it, giving drug developers the confidence to advance the right candidates and stop the wrong ones early. We have strong commercial traction with enterprise pharma customers. Our founding team built the field of next-generation protein characterization out of Carolyn Bertozzi's Nobel laureate lab at Stanford. Collectively, we have 18+ years of collective domain expertise, 47+ scientific publications, and a 2x YC Founder. We move at the highest velocity and are positioned to lead the next generation of modern AI development in the life sciences.