---
title: 'Associate Engineer/ Engineer I, Formulations and Characterization at Lila Sciences'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/associate-engineer-engineer-i-formulations-and-characterization-lila-sciences-6dy4t3wbbqar'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-04'
---

# Associate Engineer/ Engineer I, Formulations and Characterization at Lila Sciences

- **Company:** Lila Sciences
- **Location:** Cambridge, MA
- **Compensation:** $68k–$101k
- **Posted:** 2026-08-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-04
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/lilasciences/jobs/4363232009

## Job description

## Your Impact at LILA

We are seeking a motivated and detail-oriented Associate Engineer / Engineer I to join our high-throughput Research Operations team. In this role, you will focus on hands-on material formulation characterization using synthesis techniques relevant to rheology, material chemistry, and mechanical properties.

You will gain hands-on experience with state-of-the-art automation technologies while contributing directly to projects that drive our company’s growth.

This is an excellent opportunity for candidates excited to learn engineering principles, work with advanced laboratory automation, and develop a strong foundation in scientific operations in a dynamic, shift-based environment.

## What You'll Be Building

- Conduct rheological, thermal, and chemical characterization/measurements of formulations, and perform mechanical testing on polymer-based specimens, such as tensile, peel, and shear tests
- Perform wet-lab materials characterization and formulation of materials including coatings, solutions, adhesives, paints, and elastic materials
- Prepare reagents, solutions/electrolytes, test specimens, and consumables to ensure seamless continuation of experiments across shifts
- Follow detailed standard operating procedures (SOPs) to ensure accuracy, reproducibility, and throughput
- Monitor workflow performance, troubleshoot common issues, and escalate when necessary to ensure continuity between shifts
- Record, organize, and maintain experimental data with high attention to detail
- Identify opportunities to improve efficiency and streamline processes across shift operations
- Flag unusual features or results for scientist review
- Collaborate with scientists and engineers to support diverse projects across life sciences and physical sciences

## What You'll Need to Succeed

- Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, Physics, Chemical/Materials Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent laboratory experience)
- 1 year of experience with bench top and wet lab environments in an industrial setting performing characterization, mechanical testing (must have peel and shear experience), pipetting, chemical handling, and solution and sample preparation
- Hands-on experience characterizing, synthesizing, and testing materials such as coatings, solutions, adhesives, paints, and elastic materials
- Experience working and disposing of acids and bases, synthesis in fume hoods, and handling powders
- Experience working in high-throughput production environments with a focus on scalability, efficiency, and accuracy
- Curiosity to learn new skills and techniques relevant to materials science
- Strong attention to detail and organizational skills

Bonus Points For

- Additional familiarity with: materials processing, mechanical testing techniques (tensile, tack, high temp), rheology, calorimetry (TGA/DSC), spectroscopy (IR), polymer-based systems, materials characterization (SAXS/WAXS, DLS/SLS, Optical Microscopy, Elemental Analysis)
- Basic engineering skills for troubleshooting characterization tools such as centrifuges, pipettes, ovens, chemical handlers, glove box, and pumps
- Familiarity with automated workflows and techniques to operate and generate custom scripts

## 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 $68,000—$100,800 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](https://www.lila.ai/candidate-privacy-policy-notice).

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.

## About Lila Sciences

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Lila Sciences is building the world’s first Scientific Superintelligence platform and autonomous lab, using AI to autonomously generate hypotheses, design and run experiments, and learn from results in real time across life sciences, chemistry, materials, energy, and defense.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Privately Held) – Series A, Seed, and Grant funding rounds
- **Headquarters**: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- **Founded**: Not publicly available (first funding round was Seed in March 2025)
- **Founders**: Not publicly available (founded within Flagship Pioneering’s ecosystem)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI-powered scientific discovery and autonomous laboratory platforms
- **Target customers**: B2B – research organizations, biotech, pharmaceutical, energy, materials, aerospace, and defense companies
- **Mission**: “Scientific Superintelligence to solve humankind’s greatest challenges” – accelerating discovery across medicine, materials, energy, and defense

## Products & Services
- **LILA Platform (Scientific Superintelligence)**: An AI model and operating system that autonomously executes the entire scientific method – generating hypotheses, designing experiments, running them in physical labs, and learning from results in real time.
- **AI Science Factory™ Instruments**: Proprietary hardware and robotics that serve as the “body” of the platform, enabling automated experimentation at scale.
- **Domain-specific applications**: Tailored solutions for biotech (drug discovery, protein engineering), therapeutics (mRNA, antibodies, cell therapies), energy & environment (clean fuels, catalysis, critical minerals), advanced materials, chemicals, aerospace & defense, and oil & gas.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding – USD $550.7M (as of LinkedIn data)
  - Seed Round (March 2025): $200M led by Flagship Pioneering
  - Series A (September 2025): $235M led by Braidwell and Collective Global Management
  - Series A (November 2025): $115M led by NVentures (NVIDIA)
  - Grant (January 2026): $671,400 led by ARIA
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Flagship Pioneering, NVIDIA (NVentures), Braidwell, Collective Global Management, ARIA
- **Growth Signals**: Named #25 on the 2026 CNBC Disruptor 50 List; headcount of 308 employees (monthly growth +10.6%); 122 active job postings; operates in 6 countries (US, UK, Canada, Poland, Spain, Germany)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proprietary AI model** that consistently outperforms other models across scientific domains in complex analysis and reasoning.
- **Autonomous physical labs** that close the loop between AI hypothesis generation and real-world experimentation.
- **“Team of Teams” operating model** enabling startup speed at scale while maintaining radical transparency and high trust.
- **General platform approach** (inspired by Rich Sutton’s “Bitter Lesson”) rather than narrow domain-specific tools, allowing broad applicability.

## Strategic Focus
- Accelerating discovery across medicine, materials, energy, and defense
- Scaling the autonomous science platform to more industries and use cases
- Building “Scientific Superintelligence” that can tackle humanity’s greatest challenges
- Continued investment in AI research, robotics, and lab automation

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Emphasizes velocity, trust, curiosity, truth, and grit. “Think freely, prove precisely.” A high-trust, mission-driven environment where scientists and engineers work side by side.
- **Remote/Hybrid/Office**: Roles are listed in Cambridge, MA; San Francisco, CA; and London, UK. Physical lab presence suggests significant on-site work, but some roles may offer flexibility. Policy not explicitly stated.
- **Notable perks/engineering culture**: Opportunity to work at the frontier of AI and scientific discovery; collaboration with world-renowned experts; access to cutting-edge robotics and AI infrastructure; strong emphasis on learning and teaching (“generous teachers and eager learners”).

## Sources
1. [lila.ai](https://www.lila.ai/)
2. [lila.ai/about](https://www.lila.ai/about)
3. [lila.ai/open-roles](https://www.lila.ai/open-roles)
4. [LinkedIn - Lila Sciences](https://www.linkedin.com/company/lila-sciences)
5. [Greenhouse Job Board](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/lilasciences/jobs/4246302009)

## Other roles at Lila Sciences

- [Data Scientist II / Senior Data Scientist, Life Sciences](https://feeny.ai/job/data-scientist-ii-senior-data-scientist-life-sciences-lila-sciences-cambridge-wvrt5y3pkr50) — Cambridge, MA
- [Senior Data Engineer, Bioinformatics, Cheminformatics, Materials](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-engineer-bioinformatics-cheminformatics-materials-lila-sciences-san-kp5d4nbn38vz) — San Francisco, CA
- [Associate Director, App](https://feeny.ai/job/associate-director-app-lila-sciences-cambridge-46qgd5hp866e) — Cambridge, MA / San Francisco, CA
- [Maintenance Engineering Technician II](https://feeny.ai/job/maintenance-engineering-technician-ii-lila-sciences-cambridge-qgp4st6zk9gw) — Cambridge, MA
- [Research Scientist, Photonic Materials Discovery](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-photonic-materials-discovery-lila-sciences-cambridge-m87b6zgatgmg) — Cambridge, MA
- [Research Scientist I/II, Computational Organic Electronics](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-i-ii-computational-organic-electronics-lila-sciences-mh2tq43ahp5d) — Cambridge, MA
- [Senior Manager, Scientific Discovery Capacity Planning](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-scientific-discovery-capacity-planning-lila-sciences-cambridge-c1tjq0yzrj9f) — Cambridge, MA
- [Finance Business Partner, AI & Software](https://feeny.ai/job/finance-business-partner-ai-software-lila-sciences-cambridge-dme1cxf7yazg) — Cambridge, MA
- [Associate Director / Director, Strategic Finance](https://feeny.ai/job/associate-director-director-strategic-finance-lila-sciences-cambridge-fp5gxvaqvt2k) — Cambridge, MA
- [Scientist II/Senior Melt Polymer Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/scientist-ii-senior-melt-polymer-scientist-lila-sciences-cambridge-jc2qn2patfg0) — Cambridge, MA