Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, Physical Sciences (Level Flexible)

Lila Sciences, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 192,000 - 256,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Dental benefits

Vision benefits

Life insurance

Disability insurance

Flexible time off

Parental leave

Educational assistance

Commuter benefits

Lunch program

Job summary

Lila Sciences is hiring a Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, Physical Sciences. You will embed with customer teams, building tools for data analysis and process optimization, and deploying AI-powered workflows that connect with industrial instruments and data systems.

You will contribute across backend, frontend, and data layers, delivering production code rapidly and collaborating with product and technical leaders across multiple domains.

Qualifications

• Domain expertise in chemistry, materials science, or related field.
• Ability to communicate effectively with external partners and internal product and technical leaders.
• Experience with data engineering, ETL pipelines, and working with complex datasets.
• Strong full-stack development skills across backend, frontend, and data layers.

Responsibilities

• Embed within internal and external materials science teams to address customer problems.
• Develop, wrap, and adapt domain-specific tools for data analysis and process optimization.
• Deploy custom agentic workflows that integrate with industrial instruments and data systems.
• Build real-time data pipelines and intuitive interfaces for AI/ML capabilities.

Tools

VASP

Quantum Espresso

TypeScript

React

ERP

MES

SCADA

Full-stack development

Data engineering

ETL pipelines

Chemistry

Materials science

Job description

Staff Forward Deployed Engineer, Physical Sciences (Level Flexible)

Cambridge, MA USA; San Francisco, CA USA

We're seeking extraordinarily talented Forward Deployed Engineers to join our growing team. Our FDEs are high-performing generalists with a broad set of skills across scientific domains and software engineering, in addition to depth in one or more focus areas.

As an FDE, you'll embed directly within our internal and external materials science teams, living their problems and rapidly ideating, building, and deploying solutions that transform their capabilities across the Lila platform. You'll leverage our AI and software platform tools while developing custom features that address each customer's unique challenges. This isn't traditional software development—it's high-velocity, AI-fueled, high-impact engineering where you'll ship production code in days, not months.

What You'll Be Building

• Developing, wrapping, and adapting domain-specific tools for data analysis, process optimization, and more.
• Deploying custom agentic scientific workflows that integrate with industrial instruments (PLCs, control software) and data systems (ERP, MES, SCADA).
• Building real-time data pipelines that transform scientific data into actionable insights.
• Creating intuitive interfaces that make complex AI/ML capabilities accessible to scientists.

What You'll Need to Succeed

• Domain expertise in chemistry, materials science, or related field.
• Ability to communicate effectively with external partners and internal product and technical leaders.
• Experience with data engineering, ETL pipelines, and working with complexdatasets.
• Strong full-stack development skills with the ability to work across backend, frontend, and data layers.
• Exceptional problem-solving abilities and comfort with ambiguous requirements.
• Knack for product discovery and an ability to pass well-defined customer requirements back to the product teams.
• Willingness to travel to customer sites for engineering deployments

Bonus Points For

• Previous customer-facing or consulting experience.
• Depth in controls engineering and machine learning.
• Experience with atomistic simulation software ( VASP; Quantum Espresso ).
• Familiarity with ML/AI implementation and deployment.
• Familiarity with modern web technologies (TypeScript, React).

What Makes a Great FDE

• Customer Obsessed: You're energized by understanding customer problems deeply and seeing your solutions drive real impact.
• Fast Learner: You quickly grasp new scientific domains and translate complex requirements into elegant solutions.
• Autonomous: You thrive with minimal supervision and take extreme ownership of customer success.
• Collaborative: You work seamlessly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Technically Versatile: You're comfortable jumping between technologies and picking up new tools as needed.

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

$192,000 - $256,000 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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