---
title: 'Principal Engineer, Software (Enterprise Platform) at Lila Sciences'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-engineer-software-enterprise-platform-lila-sciences-san-francisco-1fzkdmpdezt0'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Principal Engineer, Software (Enterprise Platform) at Lila Sciences

- **Company:** Lila Sciences
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $204k–$310k
- **Posted:** 2026-06-23
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/lilasciences/jobs/4247103009

## Job description

## Your Impact at LILA

Lila Sciences is building the infrastructure for autonomous science — AI systems that design experiments, run them in physical labs, and close the loop across life sciences, chemistry, and materials science. Our platform enables this to operate reliably at scale for external customers who require security, auditability, and operational rigor.

We’re hiring a Principal Engineer, Enterprise Platform to build the foundational systems that make Lila ready for the world’s largest pharmaceutical and research organizations.

Today we have the beginnings of multi-tenancy, identity and granular permissions and scopes, audit infrastructure, usage and billing.  Enterprise customers require significantly more. You will drive core enterprise capabilities to production: multi-tenancy and tenant isolation, enterprise identity and permissions to support the full lifecycle of the Lila Platform, metering and billing infrastructure, audit logging, etc. You will push the frontier — building agentic AI-powered systems for self-service tenant management, intelligent customer observability, automated compliance workflows, Lila SDK, MCP, and AI-native external APIs that let customers and third-party agents interact programmatically with Lila's platform.

This is a deeply technical senior individual contributor role focused on defining and building correct, secure, and scalable platform infrastructure. This is a high-autonomy, high-impact role. We move fast, ship weekly, and expect engineers who thrive in ambiguity not ones who wait for requirements to be handed to them. You will own outcomes.

## What You'll Be Building

Enterprise infrastructure is foundational to making autonomous science deployable in the real world. The systems built in this role will determine how large organizations safely adopt, govern, and scale AI-driven scientific workflows across teams, data domains, and regulatory environments.

You’ll help define the platform primitives that make that possible.

- Design and evolve the core identity systems powering Lila’s enterprise platform — organizations, groups, roles, SCIM provisioning, seat lifecycle management, and fine-grained authorization across experiments, datasets, models, and scientific workflows. You’ll define how tenant isolation, policy evaluation, and access governance work across the platform.
- Design tenant-aware schemas, metadata systems, and platform primitives that support highly heterogeneous scientific data across life sciences and materials science workloads. Drive architectural decisions around scalability, reliability, retention, and operational correctness.
- Architect systems for tenant provisioning, usage metering, billing, data migrations, compliance workflows, and operational automation. Push toward self-service and agentic operational workflows that reduce manual intervention while maintaining strong safety guarantees.
- Operate as a senior technical leader across platform engineering, infrastructure, security, AI/ML, and scientific application teams. This is a hands-on Principal Engineer role with broad architectural influence, high autonomy, and direct ownership of critical platform systems.

## What You'll Need to Succeed

- 12+ years of software development experience, with a focus on Enterprise SaaS product development
- Deep expertise in enterprise SaaS platform systems: authentication/authorization (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML), multi-tenancy, RBAC, billing/metering, configurations, SDK and APIs
- Experience with modern cloud-native architectures (Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS/GCP) and event-driven systems, familiarity with infrastructure-as-code and containerized deployments
- Track record building enterprise platforms in high-growth environments where speed-to-value mattered as much as long-term architecture
- Strong cross-functional communication skills and the ability to influence architecture across teams.
- Hands-on coding in Python and modern backend frameworks (FastAPI, async Python)
- BS, MS, or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related field of study

Bonus Points For

- You have practical experience with agentic systems and workflow automation where models take actions with real operational consequences in regulated environments.
- You’ve worked on platforms serving scientific or laboratory data such as LIMS, ELN, bioinformatics, or related systems, and understand the provenance and traceability requirements associated with scientific workflows.
- You’ve built self-service enterprise tooling for non-technical administrators and have thought carefully about the UX and API design required to make those systems usable.
- Experience with compliance frameworks: SOC 2, HIPAA, GxP, FedRAMP, or ALCOA+
- You’ve operated multi-tenant SaaS systems at significant scale with strict isolation, reliability, and compliance requirements.

## 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 $204,000—$310,000 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
- [Engineer I, Research Operations (2nd Shift)](https://feeny.ai/job/engineer-i-research-operations-2nd-shift-lila-sciences-cambridge-8ete74c2jp45) — Cambridge, MA
- [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
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- [Associate Engineer/ Engineer I, Formulations and Characterization](https://feeny.ai/job/associate-engineer-engineer-i-formulations-and-characterization-lila-sciences-6dy4t3wbbqar) — Cambridge, MA
- [Senior Manager, Scientific Discovery Capacity Planning](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-scientific-discovery-capacity-planning-lila-sciences-cambridge-c1tjq0yzrj9f) — Cambridge, MA