Senior / Engineer II, AI Lab Research Engineer

About the role

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.

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

• 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).

Compensation

We offer competitive base compensation with bonus potential and generous early-stage equity. Your final offer will reflect your background, expertise, and expected impact.

U.S. Benefits

• Full-time U.S. employees receive a comprehensive benefits program including medical, dental, and vision coverage; employer-paid life and disability insurance; flexible time off with generous company wide holidays; paid parental leave; an educational assistance program; commuter benefits, including bike share memberships for office based employees; and a company subsidized lunch program.

International Benefits

• Full-time employees outside the U.S. receive a comprehensive benefits program tailored to their region.

Expected Base Salary Range

$148,000 USD - $240,000 USD

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.

Guided by our core values of truth, trust, curiosity, grit, and velocity, we move with startup speed while tackling problems of historic importance.

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.