Chief of Staff, Formation Bio
$194-260k
Salary dependent on location. Plus equity
More information about location
Powering hyper-efficient, tech-driven drug development
Job no longer available
Powering hyper-efficient, tech-driven drug development
101-200 employees
Job no longer available
$194-260k
Salary dependent on location. Plus equity
More information about location
101-200 employees
Company mission
To bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently.
Role
Who you are
- Ideal candidates are strategic, proactive, highly organized, detail-oriented, and capable of navigating ambiguity
- Degree in business, life sciences, biotechnology, or a related field required; MBA or Master’s preferred
- Minimum of 8 years of experience in biotechnology, life sciences, business development, or fund management
- Experience forming and managing complex partnerships, with strong leadership skills and strategic initiative management
- Understanding of AI and curiosity about its impact on the pharma industry
- Excellent communication, negotiation, and interpersonal skills, with cross-functional collaboration experience
- Advanced ability in creating decks for meetings and conveying complex scientific and business concepts effectively
- Strong project management and budgeting skills, with the ability to engage stakeholders and manage resources
- Kind, thoughtful, and mission-driven, passionate about bringing medical treatments to patients faster
- Curious, adaptable, and able to navigate ambiguity while shifting between priorities in a dynamic environment
- Be available for touch bases and urgent communications with our CEO as needed, including on weekends
- Travel as required, potentially with short notice, to support company priorities, including client meetings, strategic initiatives, or other business-critical events
What the job involves
- As Chief of Staff, Special Projects you will report to our CEO & Co-Founder, Benjamine Liu, and work closely with the Leadership Team to drive strategic initiatives and oversee special projects that shape the company’s direction
- This entrepreneurial role offers the opportunity to have a meaningful impact on Formation Bio’s long-term success by ensuring the seamless execution of high-impact initiatives that advance our mission to bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently
- You will serve as a trusted partner to the CEO, acting as a force-multiplier by managing company priorities, supporting strategy development, and coordinating cross-functional collaboration
- Your focus will be on overseeing special projects from conception through execution, while ensuring alignment across teams and maintaining strong relationships with external stakeholders, including investors, advisors, and high-profile leaders
- Lead strategic projects from conception to execution, collaborating with internal leadership and external partners to ensure project success
- Identify, engage, build and manage relationships with external partners to keep projects on track and maintain stakeholder engagement
- Oversee internal project management by engaging stakeholders, defining scopes, managing deliverables, and ensuring timely execution of next steps
- Partner with Legal and external counsel to negotiate agreements and establish partnerships with individuals and organizations
- Partner with finance and other key stakeholders to develop and manage budgets related to ongoing projects
- Develop and track goals, success metrics, and reporting for ongoing projects, ensuring long-term value creation
- Create materials for high-level meetings with pharmaceutical executives, investors, and other stakeholders, using storytelling and visual communication to simplify complex concepts
- Support the CEO and Leadership Team by managing agendas, preparing materials, and ensuring execution of strategic priorities
- Use AI to enhance project workflows, optimize outcomes, and drive efficiencies
Our take
Clinical drug trials are lengthy and expensive, delaying the supply of vital new drugs to patients and costing lives. For Formation Bio, this is an efficiency issue - one which it hopes to solve with its end-to-end automation solution.
According to the company, its approach has teams running medical trials twice as fast and at half the cost. This success has pushed Formation to expand beyond supporting trials into developing assets itself. In 2025, it reached a major milestone by licensing its first drug in a deal worth up to hundreds of millions. Alongside this, the company has also added an early immunology program to its pipeline, signalling a broader push into in-house development.
Now a Unicorn, with partners including Pfizer, Sanofi, Novartis and 23andMe, Formation Bio is steadily embedding itself within the Big Pharma ecosystem. How far it can go remains an open question, but the prospect of cheaper drugs and faster innovation is becoming harder for the industry to ignore.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
30% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Jun 2024
$372m
SERIES D
Sep 2021
$156m
SERIES C
Total funding: $530.3m
Company benefits
- Flexible Time Off: We have a flexible PTO policy and we encourage our team members to take the time that they need to recharge
- Parental Leave: All parents receive 12 weeks of fully paid bonding leave to welcome a newborn, adopted, or fostered child, and birthing parents are eligible for an additional 6-8 weeks of paid leave
- Comprehensive Benefits: All full time employees have access to health, vision, and dental insurance. Additionally, we provide pre-tax commuter benefits, access to a 401k plan, short and long-term disability and life insurance.
- Education & Career Development Resources: Formation Bio offers a plethora of professional development resources to employees, including a yearly L&D stipend, internal mobility opportunities, in depth trainings, leadership coaching, and more.
- Community: Our teams collaborate closely to achieve our mission, supporting each other across functions and priorities. We build connection through team-building events, quarterly company gatherings, a biennial company-wide retreat, and various Employee Resource Groups.
Company values
- Think in first principles: We rigorously interrogate all possible paths to understand how we can do things differently and faster. We challenge assumptions, ask why, and solve problems from the ground up
- Be a scientist: We are curious and we continuously learn. We steelman, not strawman in debates. We listen, rapidly iterate, and make the best decisions with the evidence we have
- Deliver care: We lead with empathy. We value different perspectives, collaborate across teams, and support one another. We give and receive direct, actionable and timely feedback to hold ourselves and others to a high bar
- Champion the mission: We keep the mission as our north star and deliver impact for patients. We hold ourselves accountable for our wins and failures and keep moving forward
Company HQ
Midtown South, New York, NY
Articles
Leadership
Benjamine Liu
(Co-Founder & CEO)Worked as a computational biologist at various Neurology departments, following a D.Phil in computational Biology and Psychiatry at Oxford. They are also an Advisor at Harvard Business School.
Linhao Zhang
(Co-Founder)Linhao is also the Founder of Foundation 649. Previously, they were a Product Engineer at Oscar Insurance, a Software Engineer at Salesforce, and co-founder of Day 7 Photography.
Dan Neil
(CTO)Prior to joining Formation Bio in 2025, Dan was the Chief Data Officer at Tessera Therapeutics. Before that, they spent nearly 7 years at BenevolentAI in various roles, including SVP of AI & NY Site Lead and CTO.
Dale Klasko
(Senior Vice President, People)Dale built her career as a campus recruiting leader and strategic people business partner at growth-stage companies in the adtech & finservices industries.
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