Associate Director/Director, Frontier and AI Product Counsel

Lila Sciences • San Francisco, MA

9d

About The Position

Lila Sciences is seeking an experienced attorney to serve as the dedicated legal partner to its AI research organization, AI Science Factory platform, and supporting data, safety, and security functions. The role covers legal issues arising from training frontier models on scientific data and conducting autonomous experiments, including data rights and use, allocation of rights in partner discoveries, publication and open-source decisions, and responsible development, evaluation, and release of capable systems. It is a build role focused on designing frameworks for novel questions without settled precedent. The attorney will work closely with scientists, ML researchers, platform engineers, safety and security teams, and privacy, commercial, and go-to-market colleagues, translating between technical realities and legal risk. The position reports to the Vice President, Associate General Counsel, Product.

The role advises on data provenance and permissible use throughout the training pipeline; copyright, licensing, privacy, and contractual restrictions; data and research collaborations; model, agent, tool, and dataset releases; publications and disclosures; autonomous experimentation; safety, security, dual-use and biosecurity; and applicable regulation and infrastructure arrangements. It also involves representing Lila in regulatory inquiries and building scalable legal frameworks, templates, and self-serve guidance, including through effective use of AI tools.

Requirements

• J.D. and membership in at least one U.S. state bar in good standing.
• 7–12 years of legal experience, including substantial in-house experience at a technology, AI, or life sciences company; ideally covering both research-facing and product- or customer-facing counseling.
• Depth in at least two of the following: copyright and IP, data licensing and provenance, privacy and data protection, AI regulation, model launch and deployment counseling, or research and collaboration transactions.
• Technical fluency sufficient to discuss model training, evaluation, and deployment, read research protocols, and identify legal issues within technical designs.
• Sound judgment under uncertainty and ability to give clear, practical advice where the law has not caught up, including knowing when to be flexible and when to hold a line.
• Strong ownership and ability to build cross-functional relationships so teams involve legal while decisions are still open.
• Excellent written communication, including the ability to draft policies, frameworks, or whitepapers that non-lawyers can use.
• Comfort working outside areas of expertise, wearing many hats, and moving at startup speed without losing rigor.

Nice To Haves

• STEM background or advanced degree, particularly in biology, chemistry, materials, or computer science.
• Experience advising AI research teams on training data, model development, or model release decisions.
• Experience advising on enterprise or API product deployment, including data governance, tenancy and access controls, connectors, or agentic features.
• Experience coordinating model launches or drafting model documentation, system cards, or capability evaluation write-ups.
• Experience with AI-generated invention and inventorship questions or patent strategy in an AI-driven discovery setting.
• Familiarity with dual-use, biosecurity, export control, or CFIUS considerations.
• Experience supporting academic collaborations, consortium agreements, or federally funded research.
• Academic or publishing background, or depth in open-source and data licensing.
• Experience engaging directly with regulators or standards bodies.
• Experience building legal infrastructure and scalable processes from scratch.
• Enthusiasm for transforming legal practice through AI and data-driven tools.

Responsibilities

• Advise research and data teams on permissible data usage across the training pipeline and develop provenance and acquisition frameworks for model inputs.
• Provide subject-matter guidance on copyright, licensing, privacy, and contractual restrictions affecting public, licensed, synthetic, open-source, and partner-contributed training data.
• Support structuring and negotiation of data licensing, material transfer, consortium, and research collaboration agreements, including allocation of rights in data, models, and derived outputs.
• Advise on release decisions for models, agents, tools, and datasets, including open-weight strategy and open-source licensing for code, data, and model artifacts.
• Coordinate legal readiness for model and platform launches, including model documentation, system cards, capability evaluations, and review of pre-release and internal-only models.
• Support publication and disclosure review, balancing scientific openness with partner obligations and safety considerations.
• Counsel research teams on research design, data collection and sharing, external collaborations, program launches, and alignment, interpretability, and societal-impact work.
• Counsel platform teams on legal considerations for autonomous experimentation and agentic systems.
• Partner with AI Safety and AI Security teams on legal aspects of technical mitigations, evaluations, red-teaming, misuse prevention, vendor engagements, and external collaborations.
• Advise on dual-use and biosecurity considerations arising from autonomous chemistry and biology, including screening, access controls, and disclosure.
• Help operationalize the safety framework as capabilities scale, translating capability thresholds into evaluations, access controls, documented mitigations, and release decisions.
• Serve as a first-line contact for safety and security escalations and develop scalable response playbooks.
• Track and translate relevant regulatory developments, including AI regimes, health and research data rules, human-subject and biospecimen requirements, and export controls.
• Support compute and infrastructure arrangements, including cloud and datacenter agreements, cross-border data transfers, and data localization.
• Represent Lila in regulatory inquiries and contribute to industry and academic work on data governance and safety norms for AI-driven science.
• Design frameworks, templates, and self-serve guidance that make legal judgment accessible to teams, and use AI tools to extend the reach of a small legal team.

Benefits

• Competitive base compensation with bonus potential and generous early-stage equity.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage for full-time U.S. employees.
• Employer-paid life and disability insurance for full-time U.S. employees.
• Flexible time off and generous company-wide holidays.
• Paid parental leave.
• Educational assistance program.
• Commuter benefits, including bike share memberships for office-based employees.
• Company-subsidized lunch program.
• Comprehensive benefits tailored to region for full-time employees outside the U.S.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree