Staff Engineer, Data Platform

What You'll Be Building

• Data Platform Architecture: Design and evolve the core data infrastructure that ingests, stores, and serves data across scientific and ML workflows. Make principled build-vs-buy decisions and establish architectural patterns adopted by the broader engineering organization.
• Ingestion and Integration: Build reliable pipelines that bring in data from diverse sources: laboratory instruments, public scientific datasets, and external research literature. Own the interfaces between upstream producers and downstream consumers.
• Orchestration and Reliability: Operate and extend workflow orchestration systems that run complex, multi-step scientific pipelines. Ensure observability, fault tolerance, and reproducibility across the data stack.
• Data Modeling and Schema Strategy: Define and maintain data models, schema evolution practices, and data contracts that ensure consistency, discoverability, and long-term durability of scientific and platform data assets.
• Cross-Functional Technical Leadership: Partner with ML researchers, lab scientists, and product engineers to translate scientific and research requirements into platform capabilities. Drive alignment on data standards and integration patterns across teams.
• Engineering Standards and Mentorship: Establish coding, review, and design standards for the data platform team. Mentor engineers, lead design reviews, and raise the technical bar across the group.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, and 8+ years as a software or data engineer with a focus on building and operating data infrastructure.
• Designed and shipped data platform components from the ground up, including ingestion frameworks, storage abstractions, and orchestration systems. Fluent in Python and SQL and writes production-quality code.
• Production experience with relational and NoSQL databases, schema design, query optimization, and operational concerns at scale. Comfortable working across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.
• Proven track record of working cross-functionally with scientists, ML researchers, and engineers. Able to translate domain requirements into platform decisions and explain technical trade-offs to diverse audiences.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and containerized deployment (AWS, Kubernetes).
• Hands-on experience with modern table formats and open lakehouse patterns (Iceberg, Delta Lake, Hudi).

Bonus Points For

• Experience with workflow orchestration systems (Flyte, Airflow, Dagster, or similar).
• Experience building data infrastructure that serves agentic and LLM-driven workflows, including vector databases, RAG infrastructure, and retrieval-optimized data access patterns.
• Background in scientific computing, life sciences, or research software.
• Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, Claude Code, or similar) and ability to incorporate them effectively into day-to-day engineering work.

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.

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.

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.