Full-Time
Director Investments Counsel
Updated on 9/4/2026
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
501-1,000 employees
Philanthropic tech foundation funding science, education
Compensation Overview
$323k - $485k/yr
Redwood City, CA, USA
Hybrid
The role may be hybrid or fully remote from Redwood City.
JD
 Legal (1) |
|---|
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- 15+ years of legal experience in investment funds and asset management, with deep expertise across private equity, hedge funds, and other alternative investments.
- Significant experience serving as a strategic legal advisor within complex organizations.
- Extensive experience leading investor-side negotiations for fund investments, co-investments, and bespoke transactions across varied legal structures.
- Strong expertise in structuring investments across taxable and tax-exempt entities, including familiarity with unrelated business taxable income, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and related considerations.
- Demonstrated ability to lead complex, high-value negotiations and manage multiple concurrent transactions.
- Experience developing and improving legal processes, frameworks, and best practices.
- Proven ability to manage external counsel relationships effectively.
- Strong business judgment and ability to translate legal complexity into practical, actionable guidance.
- Excellent communication and influencing skills, with experience partnering effectively with senior leaders across functions.
- High degree of integrity, discretion, and sound judgment in a dynamic environment.
- Commitment to CZI's mission and ability to operate effectively in a mission-driven, evolving organization.
- Juris Doctor degree is required; active bar membership is preferred in California or the candidate must be willing to obtain it.
- Lead the legal strategy supporting CZI's investment activities across public and private funds, co-investments, and related investment opportunities.
- Serve as the primary legal advisor to Investment leadership, providing guidance on complex fund structures, co-investments, and bespoke transactions across asset classes.
- Lead the legal execution of investment transactions, including review and negotiation of limited partnership agreements, side letters, co-investment agreements, and other key investment documents.
- Structure and negotiate complex arrangements while balancing legal, tax, regulatory, and mission-driven considerations.
- Develop and enhance standardized legal processes, playbooks, and governance practices to improve consistency and efficiency across investment execution.
- Manage relationships with external counsel, ensuring high-quality, practical legal support aligned with CZI's priorities.
- Partner closely with Tax, Finance, Compliance, and other cross-functional teams to support integrated decision-making across entity structures and regulatory requirements.
- Advise on regulatory developments and emerging legal issues related to investment activities, including considerations for tax-exempt investors.
- Lead legal risk assessment and mitigation strategies across investment transactions, including governance, compliance, and reputational considerations.
- Foster strong cross-functional partnerships that enable thoughtful, efficient investment execution.
- Contribute to broader Legal team priorities and cross-functional initiatives as a senior member of Team LeGiT.
- Active California bar membership or willingness to obtain it.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative channels philanthropy and technology to speed progress in science, education, and community development by funding grants, making strategic investments, and building technology tools. It funds and builds practical tools such as personalized learning platforms and AI-assisted research tools, supports researchers, educators, and communities through grants and partnerships, and manages an endowment. It combines grant-making, investments, and technology development across education, science, and community work, emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration, and uses AI to accelerate discovery while aligning tech with social goals. Its goal is to build a better future by expanding human potential and advancing equality through science, education, and community support.
Company Size
501-1,000
Company Stage
N/A
Total Funding
$2.9B
Headquarters
Menlo Park, California
Founded
2015
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- June 2026 Rare As One expanded again, with patient-led grants and Every Cure partnerships.
- October 2025 NVIDIA collaboration broadened access to open models, benchmarks, and petabyte-scale biology.
- May 2025 Billion Cells Project advanced toward one-billion-cell datasets for training disease models.
What critics are saying
- February 2026 layoffs cut 70 roles, exposing execution strain during the Biohub pivot.
- If virtual cells fail to produce therapies by 2028, donor credibility and talent retention erode.
- A concentrated science bet makes CZI existentially dependent on Zuckerberg’s continued willingness to fund billions.
What makes Chan Zuckerberg Initiative unique
- Biohub links Zuckerberg capital, AI infrastructure, and wet-lab biology across elite universities.
- CZI’s open virtual cells platform and CellxGene create unusually strong data moats.
- The 2025 EvolutionaryScale acquisition added frontier AI talent directly into Biohub.
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Benefits
401(k) Company Match
401(k) Retirement Plan
Paid Vacation
Family Planning Benefits
Relocation Assistance
Mental Health Support
Wellness Program
Flexible Work Hours
Student Loan Assistance
Childcare Support
Company News
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative cut 70 jobs as the Meta CEO's philanthropy goes all in on mission to 'cure or prevent all disease' The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is making big changes, and it started 2026 with some job cuts to recalibrate and refocus its efforts on AI-powered biomedical research. The philanthropic organization, formed by Meta cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, is cutting about 70 jobs, or roughly 8% of its workforce, a CZI spokesperson confirmed to Fortune. The layoffs happened primarily at the organization's Redwood City headquarters in San Mateo, Calif. In 2025, Zuckerberg and Chan laid the groundwork for remaking their philanthropic organization into one focused on AI-powered biomedical research, and its flagship Biohub network in particular. Their move extends a broader retreat from the couple's earlier push into education and social-justice causes, although they'll continue to make donations to local organizations. "I feel like the science work that we've done, the Biohub model in particular, has been the most impactful thing that we have done," Zuckerberg said during an event at the Biohub Imaging Institute in Redwood City in November, according to the Associated Press. "So we want to really double down on that. Biohub is going to be the main focus of our philanthropy going forward." The couple has dedicated, through the Giving Pledge, to give away 99% of their lifetime wealth. Their massive move also underscores how big donors are racing to back science-heavy, tech-centric projects such as peers like the Gates Foundation. The philanthropy started by Bill and Melinda French Gates will shutter in 2045 and has plans to make a record $9 billion in donations this year while remaining primarily focused on health care and disease research. Why CZI had layoffs and its pivot to Biohub. Because the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has big plans to expand its biomedical and science focus and step a little further back from its original focus areas of education, criminal justice reform, housing, and community development, it now needs employees with expertise in their new coverage areas. While some were able to be assigned to other teams, the organization needed more research-heavy expertise to match the new mission, so some had to be laid off. They received a 60-day notice period and will get a severance package with 16 weeks of base pay, health insurance, and a $10,000 stipend to help with other needs. The layoffs came as part of a decision to concentrate resources on Biohub, a growing network of biomedical research institutes that aims to "cure or prevent all disease," according to Zuckerberg and Chan. It currently operates as a collaborative network of nonprofit research centers, partnering with universities like UC San Francisco, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Northwestern, and Columbia. Biohub is focused on advancing biomedical science, engineering, and artificial intelligence to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases. CZI will continue to hire and grow its team, but with more science-focused roles like researchers, data scientists, computational biologists, and more. Since Biohub's 2016 inception, the couple has donated $4 billion to basic science research, and is on track to double that amount during the next decade, according to the AP. The organization has an operating budget of about $1 billion per year. "We will continue our other philanthropic efforts as well, but the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will serve as infrastructure and support for our initiatives," the couple wrote in a blog post in November. "There will be many challenges, but we believe that achieving some of humanity's long-term dreams will also come within reach." CZI's shared AI obsession with Meta. Like Zuckerberg's $1.81 trillion tech company Meta, CZI is going all-in on AI-focused research and outcomes. Both his business and philanthropic efforts are now squarely focused on AI, with Meta committed to spending between $115 billion and $135 billion on building "superintelligent" agents for user needs across feeds, ads, and commerce. CZI's Biohub similarly is focused on "frontier AI" and "frontier biology," using large-scale models for virtual cells, immune reprogramming, and disease prediction. With those efforts, Zuckerberg has framed 2026 as AI's transformative year for work at both Meta and CZI. "Accelerating science is the most positive impact we think we can make," Zuckerberg and Chan wrote in the November blog post. "So we're going all in on AI-powered biology for our next chapter."
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has acquired EvolutionaryScale, a company focused on AI algorithms for life sciences, as part of a restructuring to form Biohub, a new entity combining CZI Science and Chan Zuckerberg Biohub network. This will be the main philanthropic focus for Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. EvolutionaryScale Cofounder Alex Rives will lead science at Biohub. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative introduces new GREmLN model for genetics.
Somite AI has raised $47 million in a Series A funding round, led by Khosla Ventures, bringing its total funding to about $60 million. The startup aims to revolutionize cell replacement therapy using its AI platform, DeltaStem, to produce any human cell type. This approach could address diseases like Type 1 Diabetes and muscular disorders. Somite's method involves using semi-permeable capsules to efficiently generate data, enhancing the development of AI models for stem cell biology.
ROCKVILLE, Md., May 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Psomagen Inc., a multiomics service laboratory serving academic, pharma, biotech, and clinical customers, will join the Billion Cells Project led by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). The Billion Cells Project aims to develop a landmark single-cell dataset of one billion cells that will be used to train new AI models to advance researchers' understanding of cellular behavior and gene function. Psomagen has begun providing services to participating researchers in April. The project includes collaborations with several other technology partners, including Ultima Genomics, 10x Genomics and Scale Biosciences. Su Hong, CEO of Psomagen, says, "This project represents a transformative step in biomedical research, enabling the identification of novel therapeutic targets and guiding drug development with unparalleled precision. By leveraging AI-powered analysis on vast single-cell datasets, we aim to accelerate the discovery of new ways to restore diseased cells to health