Head of Product & Engineering at Verge Genomics (S15)

About Verge Genomics

Technology has transformed every aspect of our lives. Yet, it still takes 12 years to develop a single drug because 90% of drugs fail in clinical trials, leaving hundreds of millions of patients without effective treatments. Accelerating the pace of bringing new, effective medicines to patients is one of the greatest opportunities for humanity.

Our mission is to develop better drugs, faster using artificial intelligence (AI) and human data. We have created a proprietary, all-in-human AI drug discovery engine, CONVERGE, which houses one of the field's largest and most comprehensive databases of multi-modal patient data sourced directly from human tissue. We use machine learning to map the complex causes of disease, discover new targets with a greater probability of success, and de-risk drug development.

We have delivered 2 new drugs from CONVERGE to clinical trials, discovered 282 new targets, and signed 2 commercial partnerships with Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca totaling $1.6B. We are a team of engineers, neuroscientists, and drug developers united around an audacious vision: to build the Genentech of the digital age.

About the role

Who We Are

Technology has transformed almost every single aspect of our lives. Yet, it still takes 12 years to develop a single drug. Thousands of diseases affecting hundreds of millions of people have no effective treatment. Accelerating the pace of bringing effective, new medicines to patients is one of the greatest opportunities for humanity. The biggest driver of rising drug development timelines today are the high rates of drug failures in clinical trials.

Our mission is to develop better drugs, faster using AI to improve clinical success rates. CONVERGE, our AI drug discovery engine, houses one of the field’s largest proprietary multi-modal human tissue datasets. We use machine learning to map the complex causes of disease, discover new targets with a greater probability of success, and de-risk development decisions.

We have delivered 2 new targets from data to clinical drugs, discovered 282 new targets, and signed 2 commercial partnerships with Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca totalling $1.6B. We have raised $180M from top tier investors (e.g. BlackRock, Eli Lilly, Merck, Section 32, Threshold Ventures, Y Combinator, etc.). We are a team of engineers, neuroscientists, and drug developers united around an audacious vision: to build the next Genentech of the digital age.

Your Mission

We are looking for a 0-to-1 technical product leader to drive the evolution of CONVERGE, our AI-powered discovery engine, into new revenue-generating product lines and transform how biotech leverages human data.

Your 12 Month Outcomes

• Launch new Insights as a Service product that books $3M in year one revenue
• Develop 3 year product strategy to scale ARR to >$30M
• Ship an MVP self-service software platform leading to a 50% reduction in service-hours/project
• Deliver a biology foundation model with AI partners that outperforms public evals
• Grow Verge’s proprietary tissue dataset by 30% in Y1 by developing a capital-efficient growth flywheel for human tissue

You Will Own

• Product Strategy & Execution
• AI Innovation
• Customer Delivery

Requirements

• 6+ years of product or engineering experience with 2+ years in AI/ML or data-centric product areas
• Shipped 0 to 1 products -- ideally in AI/ML, life sciences, or enterprise SaaS
• Experience working directly with foundation models, including designing evals and deploying fine-tuned/custom models
• Experience building internal tools for cross-functional stakeholders
• Technical fluency: Can build early demos yourself (Python, LangChain, vector stores, ML Ops) and set engineering direction
• Strategic thinker: Fluency in SOTA in AI/ML with sophisticated perspective on future directions and vertical applications
• Business acumen: Understanding of enterprise business models (e.g. SaaS, IaaS)
• Strong product sense: ability to turn ambiguous customer problems into elegant solutions
• Track record of managing technical teams
• Founder or entrepreneurial mindset -- bias to action, thrives in uncertainty, ruthless prioritization
• Nice to have but not required: Exposure to pharma, biotech, or life sciences settings

What’s In It for You

• An opportunity to leverage your technical skills to help millions of patients suffering from the biggest medical challenges of our time
• Ability to set your own hours – we care more accomplishing great work, not how many hours or where you work
• Opportunity to rewrite the standard biotech business playbook and shape new strategies for integrating multimodal datasets and AI into drug discovery workflows
• Stunning colleagues who are pioneers in AI-enabled drug discovery
• A drama-free culture steeped in authenticity, transparency, and vulnerability
• A true strategic and thought partnership with the CEO
• Ground floor seats at a high growth company during a critical inflection point

Finally, we seek candidates who embrace our values and way of working:

• Ability to thrive in uncertainty with frequently changing priorities
• Deep alignment with our values
• A passion for making an impact on patients