Your Impact at LILA
As Lila scales its AI Science Factories globally, the VP of Engineering will create and sustain an engineering model for a unified, scalable platform for autonomous experimentation. This role will be responsible for defining and implementing that platform across hardware, automation, and systems engineering. This executive will own strategy, execution, and talent across Lila’s systems, hardware, and automation engineering. The role sits on the senior leadership team, reports directly to the Chief Autonomous Science Officer, and interfaces directly with Robotics, Software, Operations, and Science teams.
The VP Engineering will bring deep technical experience in automation of lab science, a track record of building and leading multi-disciplinary engineering organizations, mentorship practices that foster career development of engineers at all levels, and the judgment to balance near-term delivery with long-term platform development. This is a hands-on leadership role in a fast-moving environment, requiring brilliance and dynamism to realize autonomous experimentation across materials science, chemistry, and life science. The role requires engineering innovations to achieve an unprecedented depth of AI integration in lab science, which combined with aggressive scaling of Lila’s AI Science Factories (AISFs) will produce the highest degree of scientific intelligence on earth.
What You'll Be Building
- Set the engineering roadmap for ASP Engineering, including objectives, risks, and platform priorities via collaboration with the Robotics, Software, Science, and Product teams.
- Define and drive a unified platform architecture across hardware, automation, and systems engineering, reducing one-off designs and enabling repeatable system deployment across sites
- Establish system-level ownership of architecture, interfaces, and requirements to ensure consistent integration across all engineering domains
- Implement efficient processes for lifecycle, design controls, safety and compliance, change management, and deployment of autonomous laboratories to support rapid scaling without compromising system consistency
- Develop a repeatable deployment model for standing up global AI Science Factory sites with predictable performance and reliability
- Create a culture of mentorship that supports execution of the roadmap while fostering career development of engineers
- Partner with Robotics and Software to build, industrialize, and scale all-of-science autonomous labs with a focus on reliability, throughput, and quality
- Integrate AI into the engineering lifecycle to bolster engineering speed and quality, decision making, and continuous improvement
- Collaborate with Talent Acquisition to establish hiring practices that accelerate identification and onboarding of brilliant, culturally-aligned engineers
- Partner with AI Research, Software, Product, and Science to align platform capabilities with scientific and commercial priorities
- Develop and communicate clear prioritization frameworks across engineering initiatives; translate organizational feedback into actionable systems and process improvements
- Represent Engineering with executive stakeholders and external partners; communicate tradeoffs, progress, and impact clearly
- Partnering with external integrators, OEMs, and contractors to expand engineering capacity
What You’ll Need To Succeed
- 15+ years building lab automation systems
- 10+ years leading managers and multi-disciplinary teams at scale
- Proven track record scaling automated labs or manufacturing-like lab operations, including instrument and robot integration, scheduling and orchestration, reliability engineering, and capacity planning
- Demonstrated experience integrating AI/ML into engineering, operations, and/or research environments
- Experience building and standardizing complex engineering systems from early-stage, project-based environments into scalable, repeatable platforms
- Demonstrated ability to balance rapid experimentation with the introduction of structure required for scale
- Technical expertise across lab automation, controls/SCADA, and science instrumentation, including integration and co-development of robotics and software/data/compute platforms
- Strong people and org leadership: recruiting and developing exceptional managers and ICs; building inclusive, high-ownership cultures that scale
- Excellence in retaining cultural and technical excellence across multiple sites of lab automation innovation and build-outs
Bonus Points For
- Multi-domain engineering excellence (mechanical, controls, electrical, systems) and cross-discipline engineering fluency (robotics, software, computer)
- Experience defining interface standards across hardware, robotics, and software systems
- Experience standing up lifecycle management (e.g., PLM-lite, change control, commissioning frameworks) in fast-moving environments
- Multi-domain science fluency (materials science, chemistry, life science)
- 10+ years experience integrating LIMS, orchestration, schedulers, and reliability and observability pipelines in lab automation
- Experience managing stage-gate transitions from R&D to scaled operations across multiple sites
CompensationWe 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. USD salary ranges apply only to U.S.-based positions; international salaries are set to local market.
Expected Base Salary Range: $310,000 USD - $3,800,000 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. 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.
Information you provide during your application process will be handled in accordance with our Candidate Privacy Policy.
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.
