Lead, Autonomous Lab AI & Automation

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

Job summary

Lilly, in partnership with NVIDIA, seeks an experienced Automation AI Scientist to design, build, and lead agentic lab systems that plan, execute, and learn from physical experiments. You will own the decision layer of the closed-loop lab and work with chemists, biologists, and automation engineers.

This on-site role includes prototyping with real instruments, productionizing successful approaches, and guiding a small team to deliver a robust automation platform with end-to-end responsibility.

Qualifications

• PhD (or MS + 3 yrs / BS + 6 yrs equivalent) in Computer Science, Chemical Engineering, Robotics, Chemistry, Computational Biology, or a related STEM discipline.
• 3+ years of applied experience building AI systems or lab automation platforms.
• At least one year of direct people management experience.

Responsibilities

• Design and build agentic systems that plan, execute, and learn from physical experiments.
• Lead a small team of scientist-engineers and set the technical direction for the automation platform.
• Deploy containerized services using Docker and Kubernetes with GitOps and CI/CD practices.
• Translate scientific and business priorities into a sequenced technical plan and communicate progress to senior R&D leadership.
• Collaborate with NVIDIA researchers and internal teams to advance the AI@Lilly initiative.

Skills

AI systems development

Lab automation platforms

People management

Education

PhD or MS/BS with experience in STEM disciplines

Tools

Hamilton

Tecan

Opentrons

Job description

Lilly, in partnership with NVIDIA, seeks an experienced Automation AI Scientist to design, build, and lead agentic lab systems that plan, execute, and learn from physical experiments. You will own the decision layer of the closed-loop lab and work with chemists, biologists, and automation engineers.

This on-site role includes prototyping with real instruments, productionizing successful approaches, and guiding a small team to deliver a robust automation platform with end-to-end responsibility.