Product Manager, Chemistry AI Science Factory

Your Impact at LILA

Lila's AI Science Factories (AISFs) are the automated experimental systems that let AI learn science by running it. The Chemistry AISF spans a broad array of domains including molecular chemistry and small-molecule synthesis, targeted drug delivery and LNP formulation, colloidal nanochemistry and quantum materials, and the flow-chemistry and analytical backbone that connects them.

We are hiring a Product Manager to own the product layer for the Chemistry AISF; deciding which capabilities we build, in what order, to what specification, and how we know they are working. You will partner with the Chemistry AISF Program Lead, who owns scientific direction, and with AISF Engineering, which owns the build. Your lane is the what and the why: turning commercial pull, scientific ambition, and AI model needs into a prioritized capability roadmap, and then into requirements crisp enough that engineering teams can scope, staff, and execute against them.

What You'll Be Building

• Set the product vision, roadmap, and capability priorities for the Chemistry AISF, spanning molecular chemistry and small-molecule synthesis, targeted drug delivery and formulation, colloidal nanochemistry, and the shared analytical backbone.
• Translate commercial pull, scientific ambition, and AI model needs into a single prioritized roadmap, making the tradeoffs between competing demands explicit and defensible.
• Define what a capability must do to count as delivered, including scope, throughput, performance, and level of autonomy, in requirements that engineering teams can scope, staff, and build against.
• Co-own the Chemistry AISF program charter with the Program Lead, including the capital plan, resourcing, and phasing that turn a roadmap into a funded sequence of work.
• Drive product execution from concept through commissioning across science, engineering, automation, software, and AI.
• Own the build-versus-buy and platform architecture decisions that determine how the Chemistry AISF scales.
• Represent the Chemistry AISF to executives, scientific leaders, partners, and customers as the product voice for the domain, and report progress against technical, product, and commercial milestones.

What You'll Need to Succeed

• MS, PhD, or equivalent experience in chemistry, chemical engineering, materials chemistry, or a closely related field.
• 5+ years in product management, technical product ownership, or a product-adjacent platform role delivering complex hardware and software systems: lab automation, scientific instrumentation, robotics, or ML-enabled experimental platforms.
• Working fluency in at least one Chemistry AISF domain and the ability to get credible quickly in the others. You should be able to hold a real conversation about reaction workup and purification, analytical characterization, or nanoparticle formulation, and know which questions you cannot answer yourself.
• A track record of writing requirements engineers can actually build from, not feature wish lists.
• Comfort making prioritization calls on incomplete information, in front of people who disagree, and writing down the reasoning so it survives the next reorganization.
• Experience leading through influence in a matrixed organization spanning science, engineering, software, and commercial teams.
• Strong written communication. A large share of this job is producing artifacts, including charters, roadmaps, and requirements documents, that other people act on without you in the room.

Bonus Points For

• Hands-on experience with automated synthesis platforms (ChemSpeed or similar), liquid handling under inert atmosphere, or high-throughput formulation systems.
• Familiarity with closed-loop and self-driving lab architectures: Bayesian optimization, active learning, agentic experiment design.
• Experience with lab orchestration and scheduling software, instrument integration, or scientific data capture architecture.
• Background in small-molecule discovery workflows or in LNP and nucleic acid delivery.
• Experience supporting partner-funded or customer-funded platform programs, including scoping deliverables and structuring milestones.
• Capital equipment planning experience: specification, vendor evaluation, commissioning and qualification timelines.