Autonomous Lab AI Lead

BioSpace; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 194,000 - 339,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Company bonus

401(k) plan

Health benefits

Vacation benefits

Job summary

Lilly in the heart of Silicon Valley is seeking an Automation AI Scientist to design and build agentic systems that plan, execute, and learn from physical experiments. You will own the decision layer of the closed-loop lab, selecting experiments and dispatching to robotic and analytical platforms with scientists in the loop.

This on-site, hands-on role leads a small team of scientist-engineers, ships a robust automation platform, and partners with NVIDIA to accelerate cycle times from weeks to

Qualifications

• PhD (or MS+3 yrs / BS+6 yrs) in Computer Science, Chemical Engineering, Robotics, Chemistry or related field.
• 5+ years of applied experience building AI or algorithmic decision systems, including production LLM agent or multi-agent systems.
• At least one year of direct people management experience.

Responsibilities

• Agentic System Design: Design and build multi-agent systems with orchestration, state management, error recovery, and tool integration.
• Closed-Loop Science: Implement active learning, Bayesian optimization, and reinforcement learning for autonomous experiments.
• Solution Deployment: Transition prototypes into reliable, monitored lab operations with Docker/Kubernetes, CI/CD.
• Technical Leadership & Platform Ownership: Lead a team, set direction, review code, and own the automation platform end-to-end.
• Collaboration & External Engagement: Work with NVIDIA researchers and partner teams; evaluate external projects for fit.
• What Success Looks Like: Autonomous agents execute multi-step experiments with measurable DMTA reductions and growing team capability.

Skills

AI systems design

Multi-agent systems

Production LLM agent

People management

Education

PhD in relevant field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Git

Job description

Lilly in the heart of Silicon Valley is seeking an Automation AI Scientist to design and build agentic systems that plan, execute, and learn from physical experiments. You will own the decision layer of the closed-loop lab, selecting experiments and dispatching to robotic and analytical platforms with scientists in the loop.

This on-site, hands-on role leads a small team of scientist-engineers, ships a robust automation platform, and partners with NVIDIA to accelerate cycle times from weeks to