Despite multiple employment offers on the East Coast of the United States, Young chose to remain in the San Francisco Bay Area for her professional career. From 1995 to 2006, Young worked at Celera Genomics, studying inhibitor compounds of human plasma proteins such as kallikrein and Factors VIIa and IXa. She was recruited to Genentech in 2006, and in 2018 was promoted to Senior Vice President of Small Molecule drug discovery. One of her major research successes was development of a chemistry campaign against Bruton's tyrosine kinase, leading to molecules to potentially treat rheumatoid arthritis and B-cell lymphomas. Her team developed fenebrutinib, currently in Phase II trials for several autoimmune disorders.