Associate Director/Director, Commercial Counsel
Lila SciencesCambridge, Massachusetts, United States · Posted 5 months agoDescription
Your Impact at LILA
As Associate Director/Director, Commercial Counsel at Lila Sciences, you will be a foundational member of the legal team, responsible for shaping and scaling legal capabilities in a fast-moving, frontier technology environment. This is a dynamic, high-ownership role focused on structuring and negotiating a wide array of commercial agreements, while also advising on legal and regulatory considerations surrounding artificial intelligence, scientific research, and cutting-edge technology development. You'll partner cross-functionally across science, engineering, business development, and operations to enable Lila’s mission to accelerate discovery with AI.
We're looking for an experienced, entrepreneurial attorney with 6–10 years of legal experience—someone who is excited to work at the intersection of law, AI, and science. You should thrive in environments that demand both precision and creativity, be comfortable navigating ambiguity, and bring a strong sense of judgment and empathy to collaborative problem-solving. If you're passionate about building scalable legal infrastructure, engaging deeply with novel technologies, and evolving the practice of law using AI, this is the role for you.
What You'll Be Building
- Draft, negotiate, and manage a broad range of commercial agreements (e.g., SaaS, IP licensing, vendor, partnership, and R&D collaboration contracts)
- Provide pragmatic legal counsel to internal stakeholders across the business, product, and science functions, balancing legal risk with strategic objectives
- Serve as a thought partner on regulatory and ethical considerations related to the use of AI in scientific and commercial contexts
- Help build scalable systems and workflows to streamline legal processes and amplify team impact using AI tools and automation
- Support strategic transactions and partnerships, rapidly developing expertise in new domains to ensure sound legal outcomes
What You’ll Need to Succeed
- J.D. and membership in at least one U.S. state bar in good standing
- 6+ years of legal experience, with substantial time in-house at a technology company
- Deep experience drafting and negotiating complex commercial contracts
- Familiarity with AI, SaaS, and/or scientific R&D business models
- Ability to operate independently, manage multiple priorities, and communicate effectively across technical and non-technical teams
Bonus Points For
- Enthusiasm for transforming legal practice through AI and data-driven tools
- Prior work involving export-controlled technologies or CFIUS considerations
- Experience supporting R&D teams in life sciences, materials, or climate-tech domains
- Comfort with technical subject matter and scientific research environments
- Track record of building legal infrastructure or scalable processes from scratch
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.
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.
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.
Information you provide during your application process will be handled in accordance with our Candidate Privacy Policy.
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.
Similar jobs
Est. 186,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Lila Sciences is looking for an Associate Director / Director, Strategic Finance to join our Strategic Finance team. This role sits at the center of the highest-stakes financial workstreams in the com…
Est. 207,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join our Applied AI group and help build the next generation of our AI-driven scientific platform. In this role, you will design and optimize the backend s…
Est. 301,500 USD
Your Impact at LILA As a Principal Security Engineer focused on AI Security, you will define and drive the technical strategy for securing how AI is used across Lila's enterprise. You will operate as a senior individual…
Est. 266,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA We’re seeking a Vice President / Head of Marketing focused on accelerating commercial growth and strategic partnerships. This role fuels pipeline, enables revenue, and increases partner-driven adoptio…
Est. 186,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Lila Sciences is building a new Customer Delivery & Success function, and we're looking for an Associate Director / Director, Customer Program Management to lead delivery for our physical sciences…
Est. 216,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join our Scientific System of Record Team and help build the next-generation AI-driven scientific platform. You will focus on developing user interfaces, se…
Est. 192,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Scientists shouldn't have to context-switch between a dozen tools to go from hypothesis to result. We're building the platform that makes this a reality — and we need engineers who want to solve probl…
Est. 300,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Lila Sciences is seeking an experienced Chief of Staff to partner with our Founder and CEO, Geoff von Maltzahn, in advancing the company's strategic and scientific priorities. Lila is building the wor…
Est. 255,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Scientists shouldn't have to context-switch between a dozen tools to go from hypothesis to result. We're building the platform that makes this a reality — and we need engineering leaders who want to b…
Est. 186,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Lila Sciences is looking for an Associate Director / Director, Program Management, Life Sciences — a senior operator who will drive the planning, execution, and delivery of therapeutic programs on Lil…
Est. 192,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Join us in shaping the future of science! We are seeking Senior Software Engineers with full stack experience to join our Scientific System of Record Team (SSR), where you’ll collaborate with software…
Est. 135,667 USD
Your Impact at LILA As Lead Recruiter, you will own end-to-end recruiting across Lila's commercial and business functions, with primary focus on go-to-market and corporate development, and meaningful coverage of Product,…
Est. 232,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA The Staff/Principal DevOps Engineer will drive the design, implementation, and optimization of our infrastructure and delivery platforms. This role bridges platform engineering, site reliability, and…
Est. 239,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA We are growing our Applied AI org and seeking talented Senior/Staff Machine Learning Engineers with expertise in LLM training, evaluation, and production-oriented ML systems. You’ll work on improving…
Est. 276,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA We are seeking a Senior Principal or Principal Software Engineer, Scientific System of Record to join our Scientific System of Record Team and help define and build the next-generation AI-driven scien…
Est. 194,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA 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 t…
Est. 276,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Scientists shouldn't have to context-switch between a dozen tools to go from hypothesis to result. We're building the platform that makes this a reality — and we need engineers who want to solve probl…
Est. 345,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA As Lila scales its AI Science Factories globally, the VP of Engineering will create and sustain an engineering model for a unified, scalable platform for autonomous experimentation. This role will be…
Est. 450,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA As the Head of Software Product you will serve as the primary architect of our software product strategy. You will lead the development of our “Agentic Superscience” software—the foundational platform…
Est. 220,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Lila Sciences is hiring a Director / Senior Director, New Product Planning to help shape Lila Origins, our company and asset creation arm which partners to translate scientific vision into molecules,…
Est. 259,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Lila Sciences is seeking a Research Engineer, Scientific Computing and ML/Physics Infrastructure to help turn promising research tools into robust, scalable systems. This role bridges research and pro…
Est. 210,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Lila is hiring a Senior Engineer II, Cloud Security to strengthen cloud and SaaS security across our infrastructure, platforms, and AI-enabled systems. This role owns hands-on security work across clo…
Est. 240,000 USD
Your impact at LILA We’re building a talent-dense, high-agency research team to develop the next generation of learning systems and reasoning algorithms for agentic LLMs. Our work sits at the intersection of large langua…
Est. 218,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA We are a cross-functional team (Software and Robotics) developing orchestration algorithms (instrument scheduling and robot routing) and lab simulation capabilities. We are building the muscles of the…
Est. 156,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Revenue accounting is the nervous system of our financial operations. In a company built on complex licensing arrangements, collaboration agreements, and milestone-based partnerships, every contract r…
Est. 177,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Join us in shaping the future of science! We are seeking Senior Software Engineers with backend experience to join our Lab Software Team (LaS), where you’ll collaborate with software engineers, lab sc…
Est. 257,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Lila Sciences is building the infrastructure for autonomous science — AI systems that design experiments, run them in physical labs, and close the loop across life sciences, chemistry, and materials s…
Est. 216,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Join us in shaping the future of science! We are seeking Senior Software Engineers with backend experience to join our Data Platform Team (Data), where you’ll collaborate with software engineers, lab…
Est. 276,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Join us in shaping the future of science! We are seeking Principal Software Engineers with backend experience to join our Data Platform Team (Data), where you’ll collaborate with software engineers, l…
Est. 224,000 USD
Your Impact at LILA Join us in shaping the future of science! We are seeking Staff Software Engineers with backend experience to join our Lab Software Team (LaS), where you’ll collaborate with software engineers, lab sci…