Director, Federal Strategy and Capture, Government Partnerships

What You'll Be Building

• Federal Strategy & Account Leadership: Own Lila's senior relationships across DOE, ARPA-E, NIH, DARPA, BARDA, DoD, and adjacent mission agencies. Set the strategy for how we prioritize, sequence, and deepen those relationships over time.
• Opportunity Shaping & Pipeline Development: Lead pre-solicitation engagement to influence how funding opportunities are scoped and structured. Ensure Lila is in the room and shaping the conversation before RFPs are published.
• Deliver Impact: You will be accountable for revenue targets. You will own opportunities from identification through award and execution handoff, partnering with Product Managers and Principal Investigators to convert meetings into pilots, CRADAs, and major procurements.
• Cross-Agency Narrative & Policy Positioning: Connect Lila's portfolio to national priorities in bioeconomy, biosecurity, energy, and materials. Build a compelling, differentiated government narrative that resonates at the agency, interagency, and Congressional level.
• Team & Function Building: Hire, develop, and lead the Government Partnerships team. Build the systems, processes, and culture that allow us to scale our federal engagement as Lila grows.
• Executive Partnership: Serve as the primary interface between Lila's senior leadership and our federal partners. You report to the Chief Revenue and Product Officer, lead the Government Partnerships team, and are our senior voice with federal partners. You brief the CEO on the federal developments that affect our path.

What You'll Need to Succeed

• You already know the people who run the programs we care about, from program directors to senior agency leadership, and you have a track record of winning major awards (FOAs, BAAs, NOFOs, CRADAs).
• You have built a BD or partnerships function from scratch and are comfortable working without established process or infrastructure.
• Track record of building and managing high-performing teams.
• The judgment and presence to represent Lila at the highest levels of government and industry.
• Experience translating complex science and AI into clear, credible narratives for non-technical, senior, and policy-facing government audiences.
• Strong cross-functional leadership: comfort partnering with scientists, product managers, communications, policy, and legal to drive aligned outcomes under tight timelines.
• Excellent written communication; comfort operating with ambiguity in a founding-team environment.
• Willingness to travel regularly to build the relationships required for Lila to succeed.

Bonus Points For

• Advanced degree in a relevant scientific discipline.
• Experience at a venture-backed startup.
• Experience standing up a government affairs or business development function from scratch.
• Experience selling SaaS.
• Active U.S. security clearance.

About LILA

Lila Sciences is building Scientific Superintelligence™ to solve humankind's greatest challenges. We believe science is the most inspiring frontier for AI. Rather than hard-coding expert knowledge into tools, LILA builds systems that can learn for themselves.

LILA combines advanced AI models with proprietary AI Science Factory™ instruments into an operating system for science that executes the entire scientific method autonomously, accelerating discovery at unprecedented speed, scale, and impact across medicine, materials, and energy. Learn more at www.lila.ai.

Guided by our core values of truth, trust, curiosity, grit, and velocity, we move with startup speed while tackling problems of historic importance. If this sounds like an environment you'd love to work in, even if you don't meet every qualification listed above, we encourage you to apply.

We’re All In

Lila Sciences is committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

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A Note to Agencies

Lila Sciences does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to Lila Sciences or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Lila Science’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of Lila Sciences, and Lila Sciences will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.