---
title: 'Principal Engineer, AI Security at Lila Sciences'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-engineer-ai-security-lila-sciences-cambridge-tk3d3dt0j66f'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Principal Engineer, AI Security at Lila Sciences

- **Company:** Lila Sciences
- **Location:** Cambridge, MA
- **Compensation:** $255k–$348k
- **Posted:** 2026-04-16
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/lilasciences/jobs/4210497009

## Job description

## Your Impact at LILA

As a Principal Security Engineer focused on AI Security, you will define and drive the technical strategy for securing how AI is used across Lila's enterprise. You will operate as a senior individual contributor, partnering with IT and business teams to ensure safe and compliant adoption of AI tools and platforms.

While Lila builds AI-powered systems, this role is primarily focused on securing the use of third-party and internally deployed AI tools across the enterprise — ensuring sensitive data, intellectual property, and scientific workflows are protected as AI becomes deeply embedded in how work gets done.

## What You'll Be Building

- Enterprise AI Security Strategy — Define and implement security controls and guardrails for the use of AI tools (e.g., LLM APIs, SaaS AI platforms, and internal AI services) across the organization.
- AI Gateway & Agentic Gateway Security — Design and implement AI gateway controls to manage and monitor access to external and internal AI systems. Secure agentic workflows by enforcing identity, authorization, tool-use constraints, and policy controls for autonomous or semi-autonomous agents.
- AI Red Teaming & Adversarial Testing — Conduct red teaming and adversarial testing focused on enterprise AI usage, including prompt injection, data exfiltration, jailbreaks, and abuse of connected tools and plugins.
- Data Protection for AI Usage — Develop and enforce controls to prevent sensitive data leakage through AI systems, including input/output filtering, data classification, tokenization, and secure handling of prompts, embeddings, and outputs.
- Multi-Layer AI Security (Network, Endpoint, Data) — Integrate AI security into existing enterprise security layers: network visibility and control over AI service access, API traffic inspection, and zero trust enforcement; endpoint security for developer machines, research environments, browsers, and plugins; data layer controls ensuring proper handling of sensitive data when interacting with AI systems.
- AI Threat Modeling (Enterprise Context) — Develop threat models focused on enterprise AI usage, including risks such as data leakage, prompt injection, model misuse, supply chain risks from AI vendors, and unauthorized agent actions.
- Vendor & Platform Security — Assess and guide secure adoption of third-party AI vendors and platforms, including evaluating data handling practices, model behavior, and integration risks.
- Incident Response for AI Usage — Define and support response approaches for AI-related incidents, such as sensitive data exposure, policy violations, or misuse of AI tools.
- Cross-Functional Technical Leadership — Partner with Legal, Compliance, IT, and Engineering to align AI usage with regulatory requirements, data governance policies, and responsible AI practices.
- Security Enablement — Contribute to internal guidance and education on safe AI usage, including secure prompting, data handling, and appropriate use of AI tools.
- Security Tooling & Implementation — Evaluate and implement tooling for AI security, including AI gateways, DLP integrations, monitoring solutions, and policy enforcement mechanisms.

## What You’ll Need to Succeed

- 8+ years of experience in information security, with strong expertise in enterprise, cloud, or application security.
- Hands-on experience designing and implementing security controls in enterprise environments.
- Familiarity with AI/ML systems and how modern AI tools (LLMs, copilots, APIs) are used in practice.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP), SaaS security, and zero trust architectures.
- Experience with data protection technologies (e.g., DLP, data classification, access controls).
- Practical experience with threat modeling, red teaming, or adversarial testing.
- Strong communication and influence skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Bonus Points For

- Experience securing enterprise use of LLMs, copilots, or generative AI platforms.
- Familiarity with AI gateways, prompt filtering, or model interaction controls.
- Experience evaluating or securing third-party AI vendors and APIs.
- Background in regulated environments (biotech, healthcare, defense, or government).
- Experience with browser security, endpoint controls, or SaaS security platforms.
- Knowledge of privacy-enhancing technologies or confidential computing.
- Contributions to AI/ML security research or community.

## 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 $255,000—$348,000 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](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

- [ML Engineer, Applied AI](https://feeny.ai/job/ml-engineer-applied-ai-lila-sciences-cambridge-bxk3xbqk91wd) — Cambridge, MA / San Francisco, CA
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- [Associate Director, App](https://feeny.ai/job/associate-director-app-lila-sciences-cambridge-46qgd5hp866e) — Cambridge, MA / San Francisco, CA
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