Job Description
IMPORTANT: To apply for this role, please submit a CV, 1/2 page cover letter on why you want the job and a portfolio of previous applications you've worked on to people@valleydao.bio
Background
ValleyDAO is a startup building tools and communities that help academic researchers in climate biotech to get their research funded, and commercialised into impactful technologies and startups. To date, we’ve enabled the funding of several innovative research projects and helped commercialise many more at universities such as Imperial College London and Denmark Technical University. The type of projects we support focus on everything from producing cocoa butter without plants through fermentation, to producing biomaterials that can replace ‘forever-chemicals’ and microplastics.
Our community is at the heart of our organisation being actively involved across different work groups at ValleyDAO. We leverage web3 and tokenization to reward community members for supporting the research projects in our ecosystem.
The Product
To scale our impact, we’re building an online platform to help guide researchers through the process of commercialising their research into a commercial business. To do this, we’ve identified 3 key pillars that we intend to serve: Fundraising, Business Development and Technology Development. By providing a suite of tools for researchers and aspiring entrepreneurs, we hope to decrease the cognitive load and risk associated with research translation; making it more accessible and attractive, ultimately accelerating the deployment of transformative technologies for the climate.
As a full-stack AI web-app developer, you’ll be instrumental in supporting the development of a minimum sellable product (MSP) that will drive first sales and demonstrate the value of what we’ve been researching and developing for the last year.
Scope
Business Development
We want to build AI-enabled wrappers to help researchers develop their business model, understand competitors, IP strategy, market entry, and collaboration and partnership identification. These insights will ultimately be used to guide decision making and help researchers with little commercial experience understand what is required to take their research to market.
Technology Development
Features in this area will be very similar to business development and can hopefully use the same building blocks. The key difference is the specificity of the AI pipelines with technology development more focused on identifying technological risks and challenges, evaluating the state of the art in scientific literature and helping users to plan and budget R&D initiatives. We hope to make use of and some other scientific APIs to retrieve, index and query scientific articles.
Fundraising
We’ve already built v1 of a fundraising database which enables users to:
- Upload new funding opportunities and get rewarded for submission
- Browse a database of existing dilutive and non-dilutive funding opportunities
- Bookmark and save relevant opportunities to their project
- Receive automatic recommendations using our AI pipeline
The goal here is to clean up what we’ve built already, tie-off some loose ends on the UX and further optimise the automatchmaking for speed and accuracy. This will make up less than 25% of the focus over the 3 month period.
Requirements
We value an innovative mindset, adaptability, and a passion for using technology to drive positive environmental impact. The ideal candidate will be excited about the challenge of building cutting-edge tools for the scientific community that contribute to the acceleration of climate-positive technologies.
Position Details:
- Full-time role (40 hours/week)
- 3-month initial contract with potential for 9-month extension
- Remote work within Europe or UK
- Fluent English proficiency required
Technical Competencies:
We require a portfolio demonstrating expertise in:
- AI Integration
- Implementing LLMs and Generative AI in software development
- AI model integration and fine-tuning
- Multi-agent workflow design
- Processing and generating JSON, Markdown, and text outputs
- Full-Stack Development
- Front-end: Creating functional and user-friendly interfaces
- Back-end:Database and file management
- Software Engineering Best Practices
- Version control (preferably Git)
- CI/CD pipeline implementation
- Code documentation and testing
Additional Skills:
- Rapid prototyping and iterative development
- Strong problem-solving and analytical thinking
- Excellent time management and self-motivation
- Clear and concise communication
Responsibilities:
- Develop and maintain core features of the ValleyDAO platform
- Collaborate with the team to implement AI-driven functionalities
- Optimise application performance and user experience
- Provide daily progress updates and participate in team meetings
- Contribute to technical decision-making and architecture design
Additional Competencies:
These are nice-to-haves but not essential:
- Data visualisation and dashboard design
- Ability to design/suggest new features based on user needs
- Experience with crypto and web3 development and integrations
- Interest in Biotech/Science
- SEO
The Role
You will work closely with our head of product to design and develop an MSP that we will be launching to our first 100 customers next year. This will involve daily briefings each morning to discuss next steps, progress and any blockers. You will have access to a small team of community contributors which include developers and non-technical talent but the bulk of the responsibility for development will fall onto your shoulders. We primarily use github and discord to manage the project, technical tickets and codebase.
Your objectives for the project are as follows:
- Optimise the current iteration of our fundraising database and matchmaking system
- Optimise the current iteration of our project management dashboard
- Implement payment integrations and access management
- Design, test and build first versions of AI and data-driven features to support users in market and competitor analysis, business model development, customer discovery, and go-to-market strategy for their projects
- Design, test and build first versions of AI and data-driven features to support users in technology roadmapping, de-risking and R&D project management
- Review pull requests from other contributors
- Optimise the user experience according to feedback from our beta users
- Create and maintain technical documentation
Compensation
We primarily operate on a consulting basis, where team members invoice us as independent consultants through their own companies. This structure allows for flexibility, with consultants responsible for their own taxes, insurance, and benefits. For this role, the consulting compensation is estimated at $6500 - $7500 USD per month, depending on experience and expertise.
However, if a traditional full-time employment arrangement is preferred, we offer an alternate salary and benefits structure, which may differ in compensation. We are happy to discuss both options with candidates during the interview process.
Additional Incentives
We operate at the intersection of web3 and science and have our own publicly trading token. In addition to fiat compensation, we also offer bonuses and incentives in our native currency (GROW) provided you comply with local regulations regarding cryptocurrency accounting and tax reporting. These incentives can be negotiated once onboarded.
Job Type: 80-100%
Pay: Up to CHF6’635.00 per month
Benefits:
- Company events
- Long-term profit-sharing plan
- Work from home
Schedule:
- 8 Hour Shift
Supplemental Pay:
- Performance bonus
Work Location: Remote
