Your Impact at LILA

Lila is building a platform where AI and automation co-evolve to solve the hardest problems in medicine. Within Life Science AI (LSAI), software engineers build the systems that connect generative models, scientific data, and experimental workflows into reliable, production-grade pipelines powering Lila's protein design and engineering campaigns.

We're hiring a Staff ML Engineer, Life Sciences AI to lead software infrastructure development for our protein design and engineering pipelines. This is a senior IC role focused on the engineering systems that surround and support our ML stack — pipeline orchestration, data flow between computational and experimental systems, integration of new tools and methods, and the developer experience that lets LSAI move fast on commercial partnership deliverables.

What You'll Be Building

• Architect and build software infrastructure powering Lila's protein design and engineering pipelines: orchestration, data flow, APIs, and integration with experimental systems.
• Own the engineering side of LSAI's "Lab-in-the-Loop" lifecycle — connecting computational outputs to experimental inputs and feeding results back into design workflows.
• Onboard new tools and methods developed by AI scientists and ML engineers into production-ready systems used in commercial partnership campaigns.
• Partner cross-functionally with ML researchers, scientists, and platform engineers to translate research code into reliable, scalable systems.
• Set engineering standards for LSAI software — design reviews, CI/CD, testing, observability, reproducibility — and mentor senior engineers as the team grows.
• Diagnose and resolve reliability, performance, and scaling bottlenecks in production pipelines supporting partnership deliverables.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• Master's degree or higher in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related quantitative field (or Bachelor's with equivalent professional experience).
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience in Python (or comparable systems languages).
• Proven experience designing, building, and operating scalable production systems — APIs, data pipelines, orchestration, and cloud infrastructure.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: system design, production-grade code, CI/CD, observability, and reliability practices.
• Experience building or operating scientific or ML-adjacent infrastructure — workflow orchestration, experiment tracking, and reproducible pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with containerization, orchestration platforms, and infrastructure-as-code on a major cloud provider.
• Track record of leading technical direction across multiple systems and partnering deeply with research scientists or ML engineers to translate scientific needs into production engineering.

Bonus Points For

• Experience building infrastructure for protein design and engineering, antibody engineering, or other molecular ML applications.
• Familiarity with biological data formats and bioinformatics tooling.
• Experience integrating ML training/inference systems with broader product or scientific platforms.
• Open-source contributions to scientific computing or data infrastructure projects.

Your impact at LILA

We’re building a talent-dense, high-agency research team to develop the next generation of learning systems and reasoning algorithms for agentic LLMs. Our work sits at the intersection of large language models, post-training, and scientific reasoning, with the goal of enabling systems that learn from experience, reason effectively, and improve through interaction.

Scientific domains present a distinct set of challenges that make this problem uniquely hard. Feedback is sparse and delayed — experiments take days or weeks, not milliseconds. Ground truth is expensive or contested. Distribution shift is structural, as instruments, techniques, and knowledge bases evolve continuously. The hypothesis space is vast and reward signal is thin. Existing benchmark do not capture these nuances. The goal is to build systems that can operate effectively in this scientific regime.

This role spans a few complementary directions. Candidates are expected to bring deep expertise in one (ore more) of the following areas. In the event of cross-track expertise, please select the one you align to the most. Our interview process will be catered to verifying the chosen expertise area.

Expertise Area 1 — Agentic system building

Focus: Build systems that autonomously propose, execute, and verify scientific hypotheses over long time horizons.

• Create and analyze long-running auto-research systems that propose and verify hypotheses
• Design planning frameworks for agentic systems operating over long, sparse feedback loops
• Design memory architectures that allow agents to build and retrieve structured knowledge over time
• Explore algorithms in recursive self-improvement, multi-agent coordination, and continual learning

Expertise Area 2: Distillation

Focus: Translate strong inference-time behaviors and reasoning traces into efficient, trainable models.

• Develop distillation strategies from large or ensemble models into deployable systems
• Research methods for self-improvement, including iterative self-distillation and critique loops
• Investigate how to preserve generalization and reduce catastrophic forgetting through the distillation process

Expertise Area 3 — Scalable experience generation

Focus: Develop inference-time algorithms and synthetic data pipelines that generate high-quality training signal for scientific reasoning.

• Design and benchmark inference-time search, sampling, and verification strategies
• Propose new techniques in synthetic environment creation and curriculum learning
• Develop synthetic data generation strategies that capture high-quality scientific reasoning for agentic model training
• Measure the end-to-end impact of inference-time improvements on real scientific tasks

What you’ll need to succeed:

• An advanced degree in computer science, machine learning, or a related field, or or comparable experience
• Strong foundation in LLMs and empirical research
• Experience designing and executing rigorous ML experiments, including benchmarking and ablations
• Experience working with large-scale training or evaluation pipelines
• Ability to define and pursue research directions in open-ended, rapidly evolving spaces
• Strong collaboration and communication skills across research and engineering teams

Bonus points for:

• Experience with synthetic data generation, distillation, or self-improvement loops
• Familiarity with reinforcement learning (e.g., RLHF, on-policy methods)
• Experience with planning, search, or decision-making systems at scale
• Experience in building agentic systems with tool use, or multi-agent workflows
• Background in program synthesis, coding benchmarks, or long-horizon tasks
• Experience building evaluation frameworks or large-scale benchmarks

Scientific rigor & persistence:

• You take a principled approach to experimentation, with careful baselines, ablations, and evaluation design
• You are motivated by understanding why systems work, not just improving metrics
• You prioritize clarity, reproducibility, and intellectual honesty in research
• You are comfortable working through long, nonlinear iteration cycles
• You operate effectively in ambiguous, fast-evolving research environments

Your Impact at LILA

The AI Research team is tackling one of the most exciting, open problems in AI: training LLMs to run long-horizon scientific discovery tasks. Our approach spans the full post-training stack - from SFT to asynchronous RL on agentic harnesses - teaching models to plan, use tools, and learn from experience in domains where the ground truth isn't a preference label, but a scientific result.

We're rapidly growing our Research Engineering org and seeking talented engineers and ML practitioners across levels to design, build, and optimize systems to push this frontier: scaling post-training, sharpening reasoning, and unlocking compute-intensive agentic-harness training. This is a rare chance to join an early team with the autonomy, flexibility, and compute to tackle frontier science problems.

We operate with high agency, and a bias toward execution. Below are several focus areas within the team. We ask that candidates select the stream that best matches their experience and excitement.

Work Streams

Stream A: GPU Optimization & Training Performance

Maximize hardware utilization across 100B+ parameter asynchronous RL training runs. Responsibilities include profiling, performance optimization, custom kernel development, communication-computation overlap, and long-context throughput improvements. You set and maintain the performance baseline.

Stream B: Stack & Infrastructure

Own the post-training infrastructure end-to-end — supervised fine-tuning, asynchronous RL with tool integration, and data pipelines. Build modular, reproducible workflows with single-command execution. Manage upstream framework upgrades and deliver composable pipelines spanning Data, SFT, and RL stages. You work tightly with Research Scientists to develop and productionize novel algorithms to run at scale.

Stream C: Model Experimentation

Bring deep, hands-on experience training large language models. Lead experimentation on reasoning model development, including mixture-of-experts stabilization, curriculum design, and synthetic reasoning trace generation. You have a bias toward experimental design and tracking, and know how to prioritize runs that yield promising outcomes.

Stream D: Evaluations & Benchmarks

Design and build best-in-class scientific agentic benchmarks and harnesses, along with the dashboards and leaderboards that inform every training decision. You have experience working with well known public benchmarks and have spent time building bespoke agentic benchmarks and harnesses.

Stream E: Agentic Capabilities & Frontier Research

Train models capable of planning, exploration, and tool use over extended horizons. Advance the state of the art in RL at scale with tool-calling, subgoal decomposition, and shared memory/skills across trials to expand the frontier of scientific agent capabilities.

What You'll Need to Succeed

• Strong software engineering skills in Python; C++/CUDA a plus
• Experience with distributed ML training frameworks (Megatron-LM, TorchTitan, DeepSpeed, Ray)
• Understanding of large-scale model training techniques for 100B+ models
• Experience with cloud or HPC environment
• Ability to communicate technical results to internal and external stakeholders

Bonus Points For

• Prior work with large scale scientific datasets or domain-specific modeling
• Contributions to open-source ML frameworks
• Experience with RL post-training (RLHF, GRPO, tool-augmented RL)
• Experience training MoE architectures

Location

San Francisco, CA or Cambridge, MA (Remote, Hybrid, and On-Site available depending on team needs).

Your Impact at LILA

Lila is building a platform where AI and automation co-evolve to solve the hardest problems in medicine. Within Life Sciences AI (LSAI), the AI for Protein Engineering team develops and uses the generative and predictive models that drive Lila's biomolecule design programs from in silico hypothesis to wet-lab validated lead.

We are seeking a Senior or Principal Scientist to join this team as a senior IC focused on antibody design and engineering. You will develop and execute the methods and workflows that ensure successful completion of antibody campaigns. Scope may expand to additional modalities such as enzymes and peptides as needs evolve.

This role sits at the bilingual edge of ML and biology. You will own biological understanding of campaign needs and partner closely with the Life Science Research team to design and validate computational predictions in the lab. You will shape the technical agenda for AI protein engineering at Lila and represent that work both internally and to the broader research community.

What You'll Be Building

• Develop and own protein design and engineering workflows for antibody campaigns, including de novo design, affinity maturation, and developability optimization
• Execute design workflows end-to-end for active campaigns and deliver wet-lab-validated leads against program milestones
• Translate campaign requirements — epitope selection, affinity targets, biophysical constraints, and developability criteria — into well-defined ML problems and design specifications
• Adapt and extend state-of-the-art AI methods (generative models, protein language models, structure-conditioned design) to the specific demands of antibody and broader biomolecule engineering
• Partner with the Life Science Research team on design validation, building active learning loops where wet-lab data refines and improves model performance
• Expand the protein engineering platform to additional modalities such as enzymes and peptides as needs evolve

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• PhD in Computational Biology, Computer Science, Machine Learning, Biophysics, or a related quantitative field
• Proven track record of successful design of wet-lab-validated biomolecules through AI, with industry experience strongly preferred
• Deep ML expertise with the ability to modify and adapt state-of-the-art AI approaches for protein engineering, not just apply them off-the-shelf
• Strong fluency across both ML and protein biology, with hands-on understanding of antibody design
• Demonstrated ability to drive a research and engineering program independently, from problem definition through experimental validation and iteration
• Track record of close collaboration with experimental scientists and clear communication across the ML/biology boundary

Bonus Points For

• Direct experience designing antibodies, nanobodies, or other therapeutic proteins for clinical or therapeutic pipelines
• Experience with structure prediction, generative protein design (diffusion, flow-matching, or similar), and protein language models in a production research setting
• Experience in structural biology and conformational dynamics
• Experience extending design methods to additional modalities such as enzymes, peptides, or other engineered biomolecules
• High-impact publications or open-source contributions in AI for Science (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, Nature Methods, Nature Biotechnology, or equivalent)
• Experience designing or operating active learning loops between computational design and high-throughput experimental validation

Your Impact at LILA

Lila is building a platform where AI and automation co-evolve to solve the hardest problems in medicine. Within Life Science AI (LSAI), the Foundation Models team researches and develops large-scale generative models and reasoning frameworks that power automated scientific discovery across Lila's life science domains.

We are seeking a Principal or Senior Principal Scientist to join this team as a core contributor. You will define and drive research at the intersection of state-of-the-art machine learning and life science data, spanning biological sequences, molecular structures, and multimodal experimental data. As part of a dynamic team, you will design and implement foundational models end to end, from problem formulation and architecture through training at scale, evaluation, and integration into Lila's closed-loop discovery engine.

This is a high-impact IC role for someone who operates at the frontier of generative AI applied to biology. You will shape the technical agenda for foundation model research, collaborate closely with experimental scientists to close the computational-experimental loop, and represent Lila's work to the broader scientific community.

What You'll Be Building

• Drive research on foundation models for life science applications, including but not limited to biological sequence design, structure prediction, and multimodal scientific reasoning
• Design, train, and evaluate large-scale generative models on biological and chemical data, integrating domain-specific constraints and priors
• Contribute to the end-to-end ML process within Lila's "Lab-in-the-Loop" lifecycle: steer data generation strategy, build pipeline models, and design feedback loops where experimental results improve model performance
• Translate complex biological questions into well-defined ML problems and interpret model outputs in collaboration with wet-lab scientists and computational biologists
• Advance research standards and methodology within the foundation models program, contributing insights that influence approaches across adjacent teams
• Represent Lila's foundation model research externally through publications at premier venues, conference presentations, and community engagement

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Computational Biology, or a related quantitative field
• Multiple high-impact first-author or senior-author publications at premier venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, Nature Methods, Nature Biotechnology, or equivalent)
• Deep expertise in large-scale generative model architectures and training, with hands-on experience training models on distributed infrastructure
• Demonstrated ability to formulate and drive research programs independently, from problem definition through publication and deployment
• Fluency across ML and at least one life science domain (molecular biology, genomics, protein engineering, nucleic acid design, or related), with experience designing computational experiments grounded in biological reality
• Strong track record of cross-functional collaboration with experimental scientists, translating between ML and biology
• Expertise in ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow) and experience with large-scale distributed training infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or on-prem clusters)

Bonus Points For

• Experience in computational protein design, particularly antibody and nanobody engineering
• Experience designing biological sequences or molecular structures with demonstrated wet-lab validation
• Contributions to open-source ML tools, frameworks, or benchmark datasets for scientific applications
• Experience with agentic frameworks or active learning loops in scientific contexts
• High-impact publications or open‑source contributions in AI for Science in relevant venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AAAAI, Nature Methods, Nature Biotechnology, or equivalent)

Your Impact at LILA

Lila is building a platform where AI and automation co-evolve to solve the hardest problems in medicine. Within Life Science AI (LSAI), ML engineers build and operate the systems that turn generative models and reasoning frameworks into production capabilities powering automated scientific discovery across Lila's life science domains.

We are seeking a Principal ML Engineer to design, build, and scale the ML infrastructure behind models spanning biological sequence design, molecular structure prediction, antibody engineering, and multimodal scientific reasoning. You will own critical systems end to end, from training pipelines and distributed compute to model deployment and integration into Lila's closed-loop discovery engine.

This is a high-impact IC role for someone who operates at the intersection of ML systems engineering and life science applications. You will shape the technical direction for how ML models are trained, evaluated, and deployed at scale, collaborate closely with AI scientists and experimental researchers to close the computational-experimental loop, and drive Lila's ML infrastructure toward the next generation of capabilities.

What You'll Be Building

• Design, build, and optimize large-scale training pipelines for generative models on biological and chemical data, including distributed training across GPU clusters
• Own production ML systems end to end: model deployment, serving infrastructure, monitoring, and reliability for models used in Lila's scientific workflows
• Architect ML infrastructure that supports rapid iteration across sequence design, structure prediction, and multimodal scientific reasoning workloads
• Drive the engineering side of Lila's "Lab-in-the-Loop" lifecycle: build pipeline models, integrate experimental feedback loops, and ensure model outputs are actionable for downstream scientific workflows
• Define and advance ML engineering standards, tooling, and best practices across the AI organization
• Collaborate with AI scientists to translate research prototypes into robust, scalable production systems, bridging the research-to-deployment gap

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• Master's degree or higher in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related quantitative field (or Bachelor's with equivalent professional experience)
• 10+ years of hands-on experience building and operating production ML systems at scale
• Deep expertise in distributed training infrastructure, including experience with large-scale GPU clusters (AWS, GCP, or on-prem)
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: system design, production-grade code, CI/CD, observability, and reliability practices
• Proficiency in ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow) with experience optimizing training and inference performance
• Demonstrated ability to drive technical direction for ML infrastructure independently, from architecture through implementation
• Track record of cross-functional collaboration with research scientists, translating between ML methodology and engineering execution

Bonus Points For

• Experience building training or inference infrastructure for generative models applied to biological sequences, molecular structures, or scientific data
• Experience with agentic frameworks, active learning loops, or closed-loop experimental workflows
• Contributions to open-source ML tools, frameworks, or infrastructure projects
• Familiarity with at least one life science domain (molecular biology, genomics, protein engineering, or nucleic acid design)
• Experience with model evaluation frameworks for scientific applications where ground truth is sparse or delayed

Your Impact at LILA

Lila is building a talent-dense, high-agency AI safety team at Lila that will engage all core teams within the organization (science, model training, lab integration, etc) to prepare for risks from scientific superintelligence. We are looking for a Senior or Principal Technical Program Manager to join our AI Research team and serve as a critical operational force behind our AI safety work.

In this role, you will be the connective tissue between our researchers, model development teams, engineering, policy stakeholders, and leadership — translating complex, fast-moving research programs into structured, accountable execution. While not an ML researcher yourself, but you must be genuinely curious about the technical substance of AI safety work, and able to clearly articulate what our efforts are trying to accomplish. The successful candidate will be someone who thrives in ambiguity, communicates exceptionally well across audiences, and knows how to build clarity and momentum in a fast paced and rapidly growing team.

What You'll Be Building

• Serve as the key communication interface between the AI safety team and the research, science and technical teams, effectively communicating complex outcomes and securing necessary resources. Set up the organisational information flows that allow for this communication to happen with speed at scale.
• Drive accountability across distributed, cross-functional teams without relying on direct authority; build consensus through clear communication and sound judgment.
• Implement best practices for rapid experimentation and iteration, facilitating efficient and agile program progression.
• Develop clear documentation and reporting to communicate vision, track progress, and align initiatives with organizational priorities.
• Represent program status and risks accurately and confidently, even when the picture is uncertain or evolving.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Life Sciences, or a related field.
• 6+ years of program or project management experience in the technology or life sciences field.
• Proven experience in program management, leading cross-functional teams and driving programs to successful completion.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to turn technical requirements into actionable program roadmaps.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; a track record of producing executive-quality documents, roadmaps, and updates that drive decisions.

Bonus Points For

• Direct experience in AI/ML research or product organizations, ideally in a program management or research operations capacity.
• Working familiarity with AI safety concepts — alignment, red-teaming, evaluations, responsible scaling — sufficient to engage credibly with researchers and ask good questions.
• Experience managing programs that span safety, compliance, or governance workstreams, particularly in the context of model development and deployment.
• Enthusiastic about emerging technologies and experienced in driving rapid experimentation and program iteration.

Your Impact at LILA

We're building a talent-dense, high-agency AI safety team at Lila that will engage all core teams within the organization (science, model training, lab integration, etc.), to prepare for risks from scientific superintelligence. The initial focus of this team will be to build and implement a bespoke safety strategy for Lila, tailored to its specific goals and deployment strategies. This will involve technical safety strategy development, broader ecosystem engagement, as well as developing technical collateral including risk- and capability-focused evaluations and safeguards.

What You'll Be Building

• Set the build and research strategy for Lila’s safety approach to biological / physical risks.
• Design and build capability evaluations to test for scientific risks (both known but especially novel) from cutting edge scientific models integrated with automated physical labs, across biological / physical sciences.
• Coordinate and lead threat modelling exercises with internal and external scientific experts, including monitoring for emerging technologies and use-cases.
• Develop and curate high-quality training and test data for evals and safety systems.
• Evaluate risks from Lila’s capabilities, including through interactions with the wider ecosystem of capabilities (e.g. general-purpose frontier models as well as narrow scientific tools)
• Contributing to broader, high-quality research efforts - as and when needed - for scientific capability evaluation and restriction.
• Contribute to external communications on Lila’s safety efforts.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• A PhD in either a biological sciences domain (e.g., molecular biology, virology, computational biology or related fields) or a physical sciences domain (materials sciences, physics, chemistry, chemical or nuclear engineering, or related fields), or other related experience.
• Demonstrated ability to set research directions for open problems in dual-use risks in the biological / physical sciences.
• Experience in scientific computing, across either biological or physical sciences.
• Familiarity with dual-use research and dissemination concerns, across the relevant safety / regulatory / governance frameworks (e.g. export control frameworks, biological and chemical-related conventions and controls).
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts and concerns to non-expert audiences effectively.
• Demonstrated ability to lead teams of internal and external collaborators in buildout of Lila’s point-of-view on biological / physical risks
• Demonstrated ability to deal with cross-functional stakeholders (science, AI, product, policy) in a complex environment.

Bonus Points For

• Experience in developing or applying ML to biological or physical sciences
• Experience in building evaluations, or conducting red-teaming exercises, across scientific risks for frontier models / narrow scientific tools.

• This position may be based in any of Lila's offices, including Cambridge (MA), San Francisco (CA), or London (UK).

Your Impact at LILA

We're building a talent-dense, high-agency AI safety team at Lila that will engage all core teams within the organization (science, model training, lab integration, etc.), to prepare for risks from scientific superintelligence. The initial focus of this team will be to build and implement a bespoke safety strategy for Lila, tailored to its specific goals and deployment strategies. This will involve technical safety strategy development, broader ecosystem engagement, as well as developing technical collateral including risk- and capability-focused evaluations and safeguards.

What You'll Be Building

• Design and build capability evaluations to test for scientific risks (both known but especially novel) from cutting edge scientific models integrated with automated physical labs, across biological / physical sciences.
• Coordinate and lead threat modelling exercises with internal and external scientific experts, including monitoring for emerging technologies and use-cases.
• Develop and curate high-quality training and test data for evals and safety systems.
• Evaluate risks from Lila’s capabilities, including through interactions with the wider ecosystem of capabilities (e.g. general-purpose frontier models as well as narrow scientific tools)
• Contributing to broader, high-quality research efforts - as and when needed - for scientific capability evaluation and restriction.
• Contribute to external communications on Lila’s safety efforts.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• A PhD in either a biological sciences domain (e.g., molecular biology, virology, computational biology or related fields) or a physical sciences domain (materials sciences, physics, chemistry, chemical or nuclear engineering, or related fields), or other related experience.
• Experience in scientific computing, across either biological or physical sciences.
• Familiarity with dual-use research and dissemination concerns, across the relevant safety / regulatory / governance frameworks (e.g. export control frameworks, biological and chemical-related conventions and controls).
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts and concerns to non-expert audiences effectively.
• Demonstrated ability to lead teams of internal and external collaborators in buildout of Lila’s point-of-view on biological / physical risks
• Demonstrated ability to deal with cross-functional stakeholders (science, AI, product, policy) in a complex environment.

Bonus Points For

• Experience in developing or applying ML to biological or physical sciences
• Experience in building evaluations, or conducting red-teaming exercises, across scientific risks for frontier models / narrow scientific tools.

• This position may be based in any of Lila's offices, including Cambridge (MA), San Francisco (CA), or London (UK).

• For US-based candidates (Cambridge or San Francisco), we expect the base salary for this role to fall between $176,000–$304,000 USD per year, along with bonus potential and generous early equity. The final offer will reflect your unique background, expertise, and impact.
• For UK-based candidates, compensation will be determined separately and will be aligned with local market benchmarks and internal leveling.

Your Impact at Lila

Lila is building a platform where AI and automation co-evolve to solve the hardest problems in medicine. Within Life Science AI (LSAI), the Foundation Models team researches and develops large-scale generative models and reasoning frameworks that power automated scientific discovery across Lila's life science domains.

We are seeking a Scientist I or II to join this team as a contributor to foundation model research at the intersection of machine learning and life science data. You will work on generative models spanning biological sequences, molecular structures, and multimodal experimental data, contributing to problem formulation, model design, training, evaluation, and integration into Lila's closed-loop discovery engine.

This is an IC role for someone building deep expertise in generative AI applied to biology. You will own research sub-problems end to end, collaborate closely with experimental scientists to close the computational-experimental loop, and contribute to Lila's presence in the broader scientific community.

What You'll Be Building

• Contribute to research on foundation models for life science applications, including biological sequence design, structure prediction, and multimodal scientific reasoning
• Design, train, and evaluate generative models on biological and chemical data, incorporating domain-specific constraints and priors
• Be part of the end-to-end ML process within Lila's "Lab-in-the-Loop" lifecycle: support data generation strategy, build pipeline models, and help design feedback loops where experimental results improve model performance
• Translate biological questions into well-defined ML problems and interpret model outputs in collaboration with wet-lab scientists and computational biologists
• Support research quality and methodology standards within the foundation models program

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Computational Biology, or a related quantitative field (or Master's with equivalent research experience)
• Strong foundation in generative model architectures and training, with hands-on experience in model development and evaluation
• Ability to formulate and execute research independently, from problem definition through experimentation
• Familiarity with at least one life science domain (molecular biology, genomics, protein engineering, nucleic acid design, or related)
• Experience collaborating with experimental scientists or working with biological/chemical data
• Proficiency in ML frameworks (PyTorch, JAX, or TensorFlow) and experience with GPU-based training workflows

Bonus Points For

• Experience in computational protein design or molecular structure prediction
• Experience with active learning loops or closed-loop experimental workflows
• Contributions to open-source ML tools, frameworks, or benchmark datasets for scientific applications
• Familiarity with distributed training infrastructure
• High-impact publications or open‑source contributions in AI for Science in relevant venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AAAAI, Nature Methods, Nature Biotechnology, or equivalent)

Your Impact at LILA

As a Sr./Principal Research Engineer focused on Synthetic Data, you’ll contribute to the vision, roadmap, and delivery of our synthetic data program—from asset generation and simulation to ML training integration and measurable model gains. You will be working with the Research Engineering team in designing, generating, and implementing artificial datasets to train, test, and improve Lila’s platform and help us reach our goals.

What You'll Be Building

• Help to define the synthetic data strategy and multi-quarter roadmap
• Develop evaluation frameworks that tie synthetic interventions to real model performance
• Establish standards for asset quality, diversity, documentation, and reproducibility; contribute to a healthy review culture.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• 6+ years in applied ML/ML systems with 3+ years leading industry initiatives; track record of advanced algorithms and frameworks designed specifically for generating large-scale synthetic data.
• 8+ years working with modern ML workflows: Python, PyTorch, dataset tooling, training loops, and evaluation frameworks; comfortable profiling and optimizing GPU-heavy pipelines.

Bonus Points For

• Track record of building synthetic data sets from source data to measurably augment model performance in targeted domains.
• Experience instruction fine tuning and hillclimbing therein.
• Building product requirements and feedback into sythentic data generation pipeline at scale
• Knowledge of quantization/distillation, routing/mixture-of-experts, and cost optimization at scale
• Experience working in compliance-heavy environments (HIPAA, PCI, FedRAMP) and on-prem/VPC deployments

Your Impact at LILA

We're building a talent-dense, high-agency AI safety team at Lila that will engage all core teams within the organization (science, model training, lab integration, etc.), to prepare for risks from scientific superintelligence. The initial focus of this team will be to build and implement a bespoke safety strategy for Lila, tailored to its specific goals and deployment strategies. This will involve technical safety strategy development, broader ecosystem engagement, as well as developing technical collateral including risk- and capability-focused evaluations and safeguards.

What You'll Be Building

• Evaluations to test for scientific risks (both known but especially novel) from cutting edge scientific models integrated with automated physical labs
• Initial proof-of-concept safeguards, such as ML models to detect and block unsafe behavior from scientific AI models, as well as from physical lab outputs.
• Understanding of a range of model capabilities, across primarily scientific but also non-scientific domains (e.g. persuasion, deception) to inform Lila's broader safety strategy.
• Broader, high-quality research efforts - as and when needed - for scientific capability evaluation and restriction.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field (e.g., computer science, engineering, machine learning, mathematics, physics, statistics), or related experience.
• Strong programming skills in Python, and experience with ML frameworks (including, for instance, Inspect) for large-scale evaluation and scaffolded testing.
• Experience in building evaluations, or conducting red-teaming exercises, for CBRN / cyber risks (or for frontier model capabilities more generally, including both unsafe and benign capabilities)
• Experience in designing and/or implementing (directly or through consultation) AI safety frameworks for frontier AI companies.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts and concerns to non-expert audiences effectively.

Bonus Points For

• Masters or PhD in a field relevant to safety evaluations of AI models in scientific domains, or a technical field.
• Publications in AI safety / evaluations / model behaviour in top ML / AI conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL) or model release system cards.
• Experience researching risks from novel science (e.g. biosecurity, computational biology, etc.) or working with narrow scientific tools (e.g. large scale foundation models for science).

• This position may be based in any of Lila's offices, including Cambridge (MA), San Francisco (CA), or London (UK).

Your Impact at LILA

We're building a talent-dense, high-agency AI safety team at Lila that will engage all core teams within the organization (science, model training, lab integration, etc.), to prepare for risks from scientific superintelligence. The initial focus of this team will be to build and implement a bespoke safety strategy for Lila, tailored to its specific goals and deployment strategies. This will involve technical safety strategy development, broader ecosystem engagement, safety-focused evaluations, safety systems to mitigate risks, and a safety research agenda that explores longer-term needs such as oversight of superintelligent scientific systems.

We’re seeking a Technical Mitigations Lead, to lead the build out of safety systems at Lila for the safe deployment of our scientific capabilities to the world. Given the novelty of Lila’s workflows, integrating frontier-class language models with narrow scientific tools and lab-based automation, this role will require the design and deployment of technical safeguards beyond the current state-of-the-art.

We expect the person in this role to start off the initial mitigations build-out, and then slowly build a team to support this function.

What You'll Be Building

• Set the build and research strategy for Lila’s safety systems, across scientific data analysis and generation pipelines, safety post-training, refusal classifiers, automated safety-testing / red-teaming systems, and monitoring systems.
• Conduct initial safeguards experimentation and buildout for Lila’s specific scientific needs, and subsequently lead a small team to execute on the build and research agenda
• Lead safety systems research to iterate Lila’s systems beyond the state of the art, given the needs of technical safeguards for both in silico and lab-based scientific workflows.
• Partner closely with
  • Other members of the safety team, such as domain-specific experts (bio, chem, materials) and eval buildout teams, and
  • Non-safety teams, such as core AI, lab automation, and product teams,
• Contributing to broader, high-quality research efforts - as and when needed - for scientific capability evaluation and restriction.
• Contribute to external communications on Lila’s safety efforts.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• Track record of building safety systems, classifiers, or conducting post-training for frontier-class problems - science, reasoning, programming, etc.
• 4-6+ years working in technically engineering with ML systems.
• Experience building scalable, production systems, not just prototypes.
• Demonstrated ability to set research directions for open problems in post-training, classifier buildouts, and other relevant systems.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts and concerns to non-expert audiences effectively.

Bonus Points For

• Experience in developing or applying ML to biological or physical sciences
• Experience in building safeguards for scientific risks for frontier models / narrow scientific tools.
• Demonstrated ability to lead teams towards engineering goals

Your Impact at LILA

We’re hiring a Senior Software Engineer to team with our Machine Learning Engineers and Researchers to build software that powers Lila’s ML workflows and research tooling. You will be on a team of software engineers that work alongside machine learning experts to develop, support, and maintain Lila’s ML libraries and tools.

What You’ll Be Building

• Design and build high-performance, secure, and well-documented Machine Learning libraries that implement the algorithms designed by machine learning researchers and engineers.
• CI/CD pipelines and integration tests for ML workflows.
• Architect repository designs to follow consistent standards.
• Support debugging, logging, and maintenance for Ray-based compute environments.
• Data ingestion pipelines linking lab data to ML teams.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• Minimum of 8 years of experience writing software in a commercial setting in Go or Python.
• Experience implementing scalable software solutions.
• Experience with MLOps systems, GitOps (ArgoCD, Github Actions)
• Familiarity with orchestration frameworks (Ray, Argo, Airflow).
• Proficiency in Containerization, Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code tools.
• Acute listening skills and patience to deeply understand complex problems and algorithms.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and team-first mentality.
• Energetic self-starter and independent thinker with strong attention to detail.
• Eager to work with highly skilled and dynamic teams in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial, and technical setting.

Bonus Points For

• Proficiency with monitoring and logging tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana)
• Research engineering or scientific software experience.

Your Impact at LILA

Lila Sciences is the world’s first scientific superintelligence platform and autonomous lab for life, chemistry, and materials science.  We are pioneering a new age of boundless discovery by building the capabilities to apply AI to every aspect of the scientific method.  We are introducing scientific superintelligence to solve humankind's greatest challenges, enabling scientists to bring forth solutions in human health, climate, and sustainability at a pace and scale never experienced before. Learn more about this mission at  www.lila.ai

At Lila, we are uniquely cross-functional and collaborative. We are actively reimagining the way teams work together and communicate. Therefore, we seek individuals with an inclusive mindset and a diversity of thought. Our teams thrive in unstructured and creative environments. All voices are heard because we know that experience comes in many forms, skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way.

If this sounds like an environment you’d love to work in, even if you only have some of the experience listed below, please apply.

What You'll Be Building

• Agentic AI for science: Systems that perform sequential decision‑making and multi‑step reasoning to solve domain‑specific problems.
• Workflow/code generation: From natural language intent to typed, executable steps for lab instruments.
• Evaluation & reliability: Benchmarks, test suites, and telemetry to measure capability and quantify progress toward scientific goals.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• PhD or Masters in a quantitative discipline (e.g., Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, Engineering) with a strong background in machine learning and one domain of science (e.g. biology or materials science).
• Strong grasp of LLMs and agent architectures (planning, tool use, structured function calling, code generation) and how to adapt them to domains.
• Proficiency in modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX) and experience implementing scalable solutions for complex tasks.
• Comfort collaborating across disciplines and interfacing with simulations and real lab systems.

Bonus Points For 

• Building long‑horizon agents or RL for control/decision‑making; experience with model‑based or offline RL.
• Designing domain‑specific benchmarks and evaluation harnesses for complex scientific tasks.
• Digital‑twin development, calibration, and sim‑to‑real transfer.
• Publications or open‑source contributions in AI for science (especially publications in top-tier conferences like NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI, ICLR).

Location

San Francisco, CA or Cambridge, MA (Hybrid and On-Site available depending on team needs).