Research Scientist, Automated Synthesis

🚀 About Lila Sciences

Lila Sciences is the world’s first scientific superintelligence platform and autonomous lab for life, chemistry, and materials science.  We are pioneering a new age of boundless discovery by building the capabilities to apply AI to every aspect of the scientific method.  We are introducing scientific superintelligence to solve humankind's greatest challenges, enabling scientists to bring forth solutions in human health, climate, and sustainability at a pace and scale never experienced before. Learn more about this mission at  www.lila.ai

At Lila, we are uniquely cross-functional and collaborative. We are actively reimagining the way teams work together and communicate. Therefore, we seek individuals with an inclusive mindset and a diversity of thought. Our teams thrive in unstructured and creative environments. All voices are heard because we know that experience comes in many forms, skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way.

If this sounds like an environment you’d love to work in, even if you only have some of the experience listed below, please apply.

🌟 Your Impact at Lila

As a Research Scientist on our Physical Sciences team, you will lead the development of automated, high-throughput workflows for the synthesis and discovery of porous materials. You’ll design experimental pipelines to synthesize and characterize diverse classes of porous materials such as MOFs, zeolitic materials, metal oxides and more. Your work will accelerate closed-loop experimentation and AI-guided materials discovery, helping us unlock new frontiers in separations, catalysis, and clean energy technologies.

🛠️ What You'll Be Building

• Design & develop automated synthesis workflows for porous materials across multiple classes and synthetic routes (e.g., solvothermal, hydrothermal, ionothermal).
• Partner with engineering team to build, operate, and optimize robotic platforms and parallel synthesis systems for high-throughput experimentation.
• Partner with engineering team to interface hardware systems (reactors, sensors, analytics) with software pipelines for metadata capture, scheduling, and orchestration.
• Partner with AI teams to enable closed-loop experimentation and iterative hypothesis generation.
• Collaborate across materials science, engineering, and data science teams to drive platform development, documentation, and discovery.

🧰 What You’ll Need to Succeed

• PhD. or M.S. in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, or related field.
• ≥ 5 years of experience in synthesis and characterization of porous materials (e.g., MOFs, zeolites, oxides etc).
• Strong track record with robotic synthesis platforms, high-throughput experimentation, or automated materials discovery.
• Proficiency in Python for instrument scripting, workflow development, and data handling.
• Deep knowledge of synthetic methodologies and solid-state or solution-phase chemistry.

✨ Bonus Points For

• Experience with commercial automation platforms (e.g., Chemspeed, Hamilton, Tecan) or custom-built robotic systems.
• Familiarity with in situ or high-throughput characterization methods (e.g., PXRD, adsorption, TGA etc).
• Prior work in self-driving labs or AI-guided discovery loops.
• Comfort with cloud-based orchestration and scientific software stack integration.
• Contributions to open-source or community-driven lab automation tools.

🌈 We’re All In

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

🤝 A Note to Agencies

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.