Vice President, Information Technology

About Xaira Therapeutics Xaira is an innovative biotech startup focused on leveraging AI to transform drug discovery and development. The company is leading the development of generative AI models to design protein and antibody therapeutics, enabling the creation of medicines against historically hard-to-drug molecular targets. It is also developing foundation models for biology and disease to enable better target elucidation and patient stratification. Collectively, these technologies aim to continually enable the identification of novel therapies and to improve success in drug development. Xaira is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and London. About the Role We are a technology-driven biotechnology company using AI to compress the timelines of drug discovery and development. At Xaira, we believe that becoming a truly AI-native organization is not a future ambition. It is a present imperative. The way we build our infrastructure, adopt our tools, and lead our technology function will determine how fast we can move and how far we can go.The optimal candidate is energized and enthused to push the frontier of what an enterprise can do with all available and evolving AI tools. We are seeking a VP of Information Technology to serve as the senior-most IT leader and AI evangelist on the team. The optimal candidate is energized and enthused to push the frontier of what an enterprise can do with all available and evolving AI tools.This role will own the full scope of IT: strategy, security, infrastructure, operations, and the team that delivers it all. You will set the technology direction for Xaira, build a high-performing function, and be accountable for outcomes across the organization. This is a role for an experienced leader who understands that in a company like ours. It is not a support function. It is the infrastructure on which scientific breakthroughs are built. You will be the architect of an AI-native enterprise, embedding intelligence into how we operate, how we discover, and how we scale. You will enable our team to move faster, work smarter, and focus on what matters most: getting medicines to patients sooner. What You'll Own Technology Strategy & Architecture Define and own the company's IT roadmap across cloud infrastructure, enterprise applications, end-user computing, networking, and AI-powered systems purpose-built for drug discovery and development Make architectural decisions with long-term scalability in mind, not just near-term need Lead the company's AI adoption strategy across the enterprise, identifying where AI and machine learning tools can meaningfully accelerate research workflows, computational biology pipelines, and clinical operations Embed AI-driven automation into how the company works at every level, from IT operations and security to scientific data workflows, reducing manual overhead and giving researchers more time to do science Identify and adopt emerging technologies in the life sciences AI space that create meaningful competitive advantage in speed and precision Infrastructure & Operations Ensure the reliability, performance, and scalability of all enterprise systems including the AI, machine learning, and high-performance computing platforms that power drug discovery Build and maintain cloud-first infrastructure that can support the significant compute and data demands of AI-driven research without becoming a bottleneck to scientific progress Own incident management processes including root cause analysis, post-mortems, and follow-through on remediation Establish and enforce SLAs, OKRs, and operational standards with clear accountability Security Serve as the company's senior security leader in the absence of a CISO, owning the full security posture across network, endpoint, identity, cloud, and application layers Lead all compliance programs including SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, CCPA, and applicable life sciences regulatory requirements Build a proactive security culture tha