Product Lead, Biodefense

Radical Numerics
Radical Numerics

Product

San Francisco, CA, USA

Posted on Aug 25, 2026

About Us


Radical Numerics is an AI research lab building general biological intelligence. Our mission is to master the code of life, and our purpose is to reduce human suffering.

Our team created Evo, and started the field of generative genomics. Our work was featured on the cover of Science, and presented by our CEO on the main stage of TED2025. Evo was used to create the first AI gene therapy tool CRISPR-Cas9, and the first AI whole genome from scratch. Evo 2, featured in Nature, is the largest fully open source AI project across any domain.

Radical Numerics is bringing the rigor of distributed systems, model architecture, and numerics research to the challenges of biology. We’ve redesigned the foundation model training stack to turn the world’s raw scientific data (e.g. biological sequences, experiments, and physical processes), into intelligible, generative models that can expand and accelerate what humanity can understand, design, and cure.

The same generative breakthroughs that enable life-saving cures also lowers the barrier to creating engineered threats and AI-generated bioweapons. We believe these forces are inseparable. Radical Numerics was founded to develop both the power to design and the responsibility to defend.


About the Role

You own product and commercial execution for biodefense. You work out where preparedness money sits across the US government, decide which problems Omnii is ready to solve, and turn technical evaluations into funded deployments.

Our science team owns the core model. You decide what gets built around it: how results enter an existing surveillance pipeline, what evidence a government buyer needs, and how the software must run in the customer’s environment. You will have substantial say in the samples, comparators, acceptance criteria, and validations we use.

This is a hands-on role. You will build early prototypes yourself and work alongside an applications engineer who takes them into production. Our Head of Biodefense leads policy, strategy, and senior government relationships. You own the product, the opportunity, and the path to award.

You will carry a commercial target, biased towards long-term, funded programs for Radical with biodefense partners.

What You’ll Do

  • Decide which detection and characterization problems we pursue, and set the technical bar Omnii must clear before a customer uses its results on operational samples.

  • Find and develop government opportunities. Determine who holds the requirement, where the funding sits, and what would have to happen for an evaluation to become a program.

  • Design evaluations with the buyer. That will often mean blinded retrospective studies, comparison against the currently fielded pipeline, and performance on the kinds of samples the customer actually handles—such as wastewater, clinical metagenomics, or environmental samples.

  • Choose a viable path to award. OTA consortia, BAAs, small-business programs, subcontracts, and direct awards have different constraints; choosing the wrong one can cost a year.

  • Turn deployment constraints into product requirements. These may include on-premises or disconnected operation, pinned model versions, provenance, auditability, and the evidence required for authorization.

  • Build prototypes that let a customer see how Omnii would work in its existing process, then work with applications engineering to make the successful ones deployable.

  • Own the commercial process through award. You will set pricing and deal structure with the Director of Product and lead negotiations alongside legal.

What We’re Looking For

  • You have personally helped win or deliver a technical program for the US government. You have been through an award cycle and understand who owns a requirement, which funding can pay for it, and how a promising pilot gets stranded.

  • You have working fluency in pathogen genomics and biosurveillance. You understand metagenomic sequencing and pathogen-agnostic detection, what a false positive costs an operator at 3am, and why an inferior incumbent tool may still be difficult to replace.

  • You can hold your own with government scientists, turn their technical objections into product decisions, and explain those decisions clearly to our researchers and engineers.

  • You can build an early prototype yourself, enough to test a workflow, interrogate model output, or make a proposed product concrete for a customer.

  • You remain effective when the obstacle is data authority, software authorization, procurement, or an incumbent contract rather than model performance.

  • You are willing and eligible to pursue a US security clearance if the work requires it.

Nice to Have

  • Experience inside a national laboratory, defense or public-health agency, government contractor, or FFRDC.

  • Experience deploying scientific software into disconnected, authorized, or classified environments.

  • Scientific training or substantial professional experience in microbiology, virology, bioinformatics, or public health.

  • Firsthand knowledge of an existing biosurveillance program and where its current workflow fails

Radical Numerics is committed to equal employment opportunity and does not discriminate in any employment opportunities or practices based on an individual's race, color, creed, gender (including gender identity and gender expression), religion (all aspects of religious beliefs, observance or practice, including religious dress or grooming practices), marital status, registered domestic partner status, age, national origin or ancestry (including language use restrictions and possession of a driver’s license issued under California Vehicle Code section 12801.9), natural hair, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, medical condition (including cancer or a record or history of cancer, and genetic characteristics), sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or related medical condition), genetic information, sexual orientation, military and veteran status or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state, or local laws. It also prohibits unlawful discrimination based on the perception that anyone has any of those characteristics, or is associated with a person who has or is perceived as having any of those characteristics.

Radical Numerics participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S.