Director of Product, Life Sciences (Chemistry)

Your Impact at LILA

Lila Sciences is hiring a Director of Product, Life Sciences (Chemistry): a strategic, cross-functional product leader who shapes the vision, roadmap, and execution for platforms that accelerate the discovery and development of new medicines. Reporting to the Vice President, Head of Life Science Product, you will lead product strategy and delivery across capabilities at the intersection of molecular design and synthesis, wet-lab experimentation and automation, data and ML, and scientific intelligence.

The role requires strong leadership, crisp prioritization, and the ability to translate hard chemistry and biology into clear product direction and measurable outcomes for internal teams, partners, and customers. You will be deeply customer-facing, serving as a trusted technical and product voice with prospects and partners, shaping proposals, driving commercial conversations, and closing deals that bring Lila's therapeutics platform to market.

We are hiring a product leader with real fluency in drug discovery and development, someone who understands how programs actually advance from target to candidate and what it takes to make a molecule developable. The portfolio is deliberately modality-agnostic, depth of judgment matters far more to us than which modality you built it in. That said, this role leans toward chemistry and small molecules, so you should be able to hold a credible conversation about retrosynthesis, SAR, DEL, and property optimization.

What You'll Be Building

• Set the long-term product vision, roadmap, and portfolio priorities for Lila's therapeutics products; spanning antibodies, nucleic acids, targeted delivery, in vivo cell therapy, and small molecules.

• Translate frontier platform capability into commercial therapeutic programs, defining target product profiles (TPPs) across design, expression and synthesis, characterization, developability, and scale-up for pharma and biotech partners.

• Drive product execution from concept to launch across science, ML, automation, data engineering, and software.

• Represent product to executives, scientific leaders, partners, and customers as the senior external voice for the domain.

• Own commercial outcomes end-to-end: opportunity shaping, proposal development, deal closure, and revenue for the domain.

• Define success metrics and milestones (technical, product, commercial) and report progress clearly to leadership.

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• MS, PhD, or equivalent experience in biochemistry, protein science, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, or related field
• Deep understanding of drug discovery and development workflows; as well as the assays and methods that drive decision-making
• Track record of advancing therapeutic programs from molecules toward the clinic, or of building the platforms and products that others used to do so.
• 7+ years of product leadership (PM, Group PM, Product Lead) building and launching complex technical products: therapeutic platforms, scientific software or hardware, simulation and modeling platforms, data products, or ML-enabled systems.
• Strong executive communication: clear storytelling and decisions legible to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Highly collaborative leadership style, with the ability to influence across research, engineering, operations, and commercial teams.
• Output- and impact-focused, driven by delivered results against mission and program goals.

Bonus Points For

• Experience with automated/self-driving labs and experience working with (not necessarily having run) ML approaches relevant to drug discovery and molecular science
• Following the rapid evolution of LLMs and other AI solutions and have thoughts and opinions on how this will impact the future of scientific discovery and product development
• Background in partnering with biopharma or research organizations to define collaborative milestones and workflows

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. USD salary ranges apply only to U.S.-based positions; international salaries are set to local market.

Expected Base Salary Range

$184,000—$256,000 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.