Lila Sciences
Principal Scientist / Associate Director, Agentic AI Research for Materials Science
$288K–$420K
Cambridge, MA USA +3 · Principal · Full-time · Posted Jul 10, 2026
- Location
- Cambridge, MA USA
San Francisco, CA USA
Alewife, Cambridge, MA
San Francisco, CA - Experience
- 5+ years of post-PhD research and applied ML experience.
- Education
- PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Materials Science, Chemistry, Physics, or a related field.
About the job
Leads research and delivery of agentic AI systems that plan, run, and interpret materials science experiments, while setting technical direction and managing a small team.
What you'll do
- Define and execute the materials science agentic AI roadmap, including agent frameworks and retrieval-augmented generation.
- Design and ship agent systems integrated with experimental infrastructure and real research programs.
- Lead, hire, and mentor a small cross-functional team; establish standards for scientific rigor and engineering quality.
What they ask for
- PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Materials Science, Chemistry, Physics, or a related field.
- Track record building and shipping agentic systems, ML pipelines, or autonomous research workflows with measurable impact.
- Deep expertise in modern ML, NLP, and reasoning, including LLMs, agentic frameworks, tool use, planning, data extraction, and multimodal data.
- Proficiency in Python and the ML software stack; experience leading scientists and engineers.
Nice to have
- Publications, patents, or open-source contributions in agentic AI, scientific ML, or autonomous research systems.
- Experience integrating agents with materials science tasks; workflow orchestration or distributed compute on cloud or HPC.
Pay
$288,000 — $420,000 USD base salary
Tools
Python, LLMs
AI focus
Develops agentic AI for materials science, including systems for autonomous experimentation, scientific reasoning, and interpretation of multimodal research data.
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