Director / Senior Director, Origins

Lila Sciences; Cambridge (MA); On-site; USD 168,000 - 272,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

Life & disability insurance

Flexible time off

Parental leave

Educational assistance

Commuter benefits

Lunch program

Job summary

Lila Sciences is seeking a senior leader to open doors with world-class deep-tech and life-sciences investors, turning conversations into lasting partnerships that drive the Origins portfolio and Lila's mission. You will manage high-level relationships, co-lead engagements, and shape strategic partnerships while preserving Lila's reputation as a credible, mission-driven partner.

In this founding-type role, you will build a scalable commercial engine, engage top-tier institutions, and influence

Qualifications

• Deep, active network across deep-tech investors, life-sciences investors, science-focused funds, or sophisticated family offices.
• Scientific fluency to engage credibly with technical partners and represent Lila's platform with authority.
• Understanding of how institutional investors think, what they care about, and how partnerships work.
• Exceptional interpersonal judgment; you read contexts well, build trust quickly, know when to push and when to listen.
• Track record of opening new relationships and the discipline to maintain and grow them over years.
• Comfort operating in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.

Responsibilities

• Open and build relationships with deep-tech and life-sciences investors, science-focused venture and growth funds, asset managers, and family offices aligned with Origins' thesis and Lila's mission.
• Build and own a sophisticated partner pipeline, identifying, qualifying, and prioritizing relationships most likely to become long-term strategic partners.
• Maintain active intelligence on each relationship, their investment thesis, portfolio interests, decision-making dynamics, and evolving priorities.
• Co-lead engagements alongside the Head of Origins, from initial outreach through signed partnership, managing momentum and ensuring the right stakeholders are at the table.
• Represent Origins as a trusted, senior voice externally, protecting Lila's reputation and positioning Origins as a sophisticated partner.
• Steward and grow relationships over time, expanding each partner's commitment to the Origins portfolio as it matures.
• Contribute strategic judgment to structuring and negotiation where external perspective adds value.
• Shape Origins' partnership positioning by synthesizing feedback from partners into recommendations on capabilities and deals.

Skills

Relationship building

Strategic partnerships

Investor relations

Business development

Communication

Industry knowledge

Job description

You will open doors to the world's most ambitious science-focused investors, institutions, and asset managers, and turn those relationships into long-term partnerships that become the foundation of Origins' portfolio. You bring the network and the judgment to identify and cultivate relationships that matter. Working alongside the Head of Origins, you move these relationships from first conversation through signed partnership and beyond, building the trust and alignment that sustains them over time. This is a relationship-ownership role where you build a personal brand around Origins' mission, maintain sophisticated intelligence on key partners, and serve as the trusted, senior voice representing Lila to some of the world's most sophisticated and discerning investors.

Why This Role?

• A founding role building the commercial engine of one of the most ambitious AI-for-science platforms ever built
• Direct access to the world's most prominent deep-tech and life-sciences investors and institutions
• Genuine partnership-building with scale and consequence
• A platform to shape how the world thinks about AI-driven scientific discovery and autonomous science

What You'll Be Building

• Open and build relationships with deep-tech and life-sciences investors, science-focused venture and growth funds, asset managers, and family offices aligned with Origins' thesis and Lila's mission
• Build and own a sophisticated partner pipeline, identifying, qualifying, and prioritizing relationships most likely to become long-term strategic partners
• Maintain active intelligence on each relationship, their investment thesis, portfolio interests, decision-making dynamics, and evolving strategic priorities in service of both Origins partnerships and Lila's broader capital relationships
• Co-lead engagements alongside the Head of Origins, from initial outreach through signed partnership, managing relationship momentum and ensuring the right stakeholders are at the table
• Represent Origins as a trusted, senior voice externally, protecting Lila's reputation, demonstrating scientific credibility, and positioning Origins as a sophisticated, mission-driven partner
• Steward and grow relationships over time, maintaining engagement and expanding each partner's commitment to the Origins portfolio as it matures
• Contribute strategic judgment to structuring and negotiation where your external perspective, relationships, and deal fluency add value
• Shape Origins' partnership positioning by synthesizing feedback from partners into recommendations on how we should present our capabilities, thesis, and deal opportunities

What You'll Need to Succeed

• Deep, active network across deep-tech investors, life-sciences investors, science-focused funds, or sophisticated family offices
• Scientific fluency sufficient to engage credibly with technical partners and represent Lila's platform with authority
• Understanding of how institutional investors think, what they care about, and how partnerships work
• Exceptional interpersonal judgment. You read contexts well, build trust quickly, know when to push and when to listen
• Track record of opening new relationships and the discipline to maintain and grow them over years
• Comfort operating in fast-moving, ambiguous environments

Bonus Points For

• Prior role at a science-focused company or fund
• Experience negotiating large partnerships or transactions
• Global institutional relationships; familiarity with foreign investment or export control dynamics

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

$168,000 - $272,000 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.

Lila Sciences iscommitted to equal employment opportunityregardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

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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.