Job Description

Join us to build the company that makes AI do the reasoning work of drug discovery - so a small team can do the research of a large one.

We are seeking an experienced founder and operator to join two technical founders as Co-founder & CEO, and to take a built, already-used platform from spin-out through a competitive seed round, Series A and beyond.

The role is full-time, UK-based, spinning out of Deep Science Ventures over the coming months.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Drug discovery still runs on human cognition. Progress depends on people reading the literature, joining dots across teams and datasets that rarely talk to each other, and guessing what to test next - bounded by how much any one person can hold in their head, and slowed by the silos between groups. It is one of the most important problems in the world, and one of the least scalable.

We are building the AI that does that reasoning - at scale. The platform generates and pressure-tests drug-disease hypotheses, verifies scientific claims against the evidence, and connects information that today sits trapped across separate teams and tools, cutting the friction and silos that slow research down so a small team can do the work of a large one. It already works end-to-end: in a single run it read an entire disease's single-cell research literature, built a connected map of the biology, and returned drug-target hypotheses - each one marked as supported or refuted and traceable back to the evidence behind it. The technical foundation is done, and it is further along than most companies at this stage.

We go to market through the one thing the engine does end-to-end today - integrated target validation telling a discovery team which targets are worth pursuing, with the evidence shown. The same engine then compounds, one data type at a time, toward the prize the whole field wants - predicting what a clinical trial will do before it runs, and explaining why.

We imagine a future where the pace of discovery is set by the quality of ideas, not the limits of human bandwidth - monetised the way pharma now actually buys AI: small upfront, milestone-based partnerships. We are now seeking a Co-founder & CEO to partner with our two technical founders and turn this into a category-defining company.

THE ROLE

This is a deeply hands-on role. As Co-founder & CEO you own the commercial and company-building side from day one, working hand-in-hand with the two technical founders, who own the product and the science. You will:

• Lead fundraising - run a competitive seed round and the path to Series A. This is the single most important thing.
• Build the commercial engine - partnerships, pilots and paying customers across pharma and biotech.
• Build the company - hiring, story, board, grant and academic partnerships, and day-to-day operations.
• Shape strategy and positioning alongside the founding team.

Location: Hybrid, UK-based · Commitment: Full-time from spin-out · Equity: Meaningful co-founder equity, milestone-linked.

Requirements

Essential Values

• Driven to build a category-defining company at the frontier of AI and drug discovery, and to challenge how the industry works today.
• Impact-driven: you take the initiative, make things happen, and think from first principles about what's really needed.
• Clear entrepreneurial spirit, with the ability to thrive in an ambiguous, unstructured, fast-paced and demanding environment.
• Collaborative by nature - able to partner closely with two technical founders.

Essential experience (must-have)

• Built and/or led a company at founder or C-suite level.
• Personally raised venture capital - ideally led a priced round as a founder.
• A strong, transferable investor network in deep-tech, AI, bio or health.
• Commercial and business-development track record: partnerships, pilots, paying customers.
• Credible in a technical and scientific room - you won't bluff your way through a science conversation.
• UK-based and able to go full-time from spin-out.

Preferred experience (nice-to-have)

• Came from a leading AI lab or AI-drug-discovery company in a genuinely impactful role, and want to build your own thing.
• Have scaled a company from seed to Series A and beyond.
• A network across pharma / biotech business development.
• Experience selling technical or scientific software into pharma, biotech or research institutions.

Benefits

By joining DSV, you'll be joining a team of operators who have founded companies and led the translation of science at some of the most respected universities, charities, funds and government agencies. DSV is a leading deep-tech venture studio with a portfolio of 50+ science-led companies at a total valuation of ~$700m.

• A genuine co-founder equity stake, milestone-linked so that delivering a strong round is richly rewarded.
• Access to proprietary venture-building tools, resources and processes proven to create high-impact companies from scratch.
• Access to DSV's global network of investors, advisors and industrial partners.
• A proven, working platform and a hard technical moat already in place - your job is the market and the money, not the technology.
• Continuous post-spinout support including fundraising, commercial partnerships, recruitment and team-building.

ABOUT DSV

Deep Science Ventures (DSV) is on a mission to create a future in which both humans and the planet can thrive. We use our unique venture creation process to create, spin-out, and invest in science companies, combining available scientific knowledge and founder-type scientists into high-impact ventures. Operating across Pharmaceuticals, Climate, Agriculture, and Computation, we tackle the challenges defining these areas by taking a first-principles approach and partnering with leading institutions.