AI Scientist: Nucleic Acid Design

Lila Sciences; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 176,000 - 304,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Flexible time off

Parental leave

Commuter benefits

Lunch program

Job summary

Lila Sciences is seeking an ML Scientist I/II focused on nucleic acid design to advance RNA and DNA sequence design. You will build models and strategies to understand and engineer nucleic acid sequences, addressing 3’ UTR, 5’ UTR, CDS, and promoter/enhancer design.

You will work at the intersection of machine learning, sequence modeling, experimental design, and platform development, delivering usable capabilities across Lila’s autonomous science platform.

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent in ML, computational biology, bioengineering, CS or related field.
• Hands-on experience building and evaluating ML models for DNA/RNA.
• Strong foundation in modern ML methods; practical PyTorch/JAX experience.
• Experience developing models for sequence design and sequence–function prediction.
• Ability to reason about complex biological systems and formulate ML approaches to difficult problems.
• Interest in nucleic acid biology, RNA biology, regulatory genomics, and sequence-to-function modeling.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across ML, engineering, platform, and experimental teams.

Responsibilities

• Build ML models for RNA and DNA sequence design across regulatory and coding contexts.
• Develop methods for de novo generation, sequence property prediction, and active learning.
• Investigate biological mechanisms of designed sequences and translate insights into better models.
• Propose informative assays and learning loops with experimental scientists.
• Collaborate with ML scientists to integrate design models into robust platforms.

Skills

PhD or equivalent

ML modeling

PyTorch/JAX

Sequence design models

Biological systems reasoning

Nucleic acid biology curiosity

Communication & collaboration

Education

PhD or equivalent in ML/CompBio/Bioengineering/CS

Tools

PyTorch

JAX

Job description

Lila Sciences is seeking an ML Scientist I/II focused on nucleic acid design to advance RNA and DNA sequence design. You will build models and strategies to understand and engineer nucleic acid sequences, addressing 3’ UTR, 5’ UTR, CDS, and promoter/enhancer design.

You will work at the intersection of machine learning, sequence modeling, experimental design, and platform development, delivering usable capabilities across Lila’s autonomous science platform.