Senior / Principal Materials Scientist, AI Safety

Lila Sciences • Cambridge, MA

7d • $268,000 - $384,000

About The Position

Lila Sciences is building an AI safety team that will work across science, model training, and lab integration to identify and mitigate risks from scientific superintelligence while preserving scientific discovery capabilities. The team's initial focus is to develop and implement a safety strategy tailored to Lila's goals and deployment strategies, including technical safety strategy, ecosystem engagement, safety evaluations, risk-mitigation systems, and research into longer-term needs such as oversight of superintelligent scientific systems.

The Materials Scientist will map risks across materials science by connecting deep materials expertise with dual-use risk assessment. The role investigates how materials research advances could change harmful capabilities, including established and emerging threats. The work includes assessing feasibility and misuse likelihood, distinguishing demonstrated capabilities from plausible developments and less-supported hypotheses, coordinating specialist input, and translating dual-use assessments into policy boundaries, evaluation priorities, and mitigation requirements. The scientist will collaborate with threat modelers, evaluation researchers, engineers, and experimental colleagues to assess capabilities, interpret red-team findings, and evaluate safeguards.

Requirements

• A PhD or comparable experience in materials science or a closely related discipline, with a strong grasp of the relationships between structure, properties, processing, and applications.
• Substantive experience assessing dual-use risks in a relevant area, with a strong understanding of harmful applications such as nuclear proliferation, radiological misuse, weapons-related capabilities (e.g., energetics), or other consequential materials risks.
• Sound judgment about physical possibility, practical feasibility, and uncertainty, and the ability to investigate risks beyond one's immediate specialism.
• Ability to identify appropriate specialists, evaluate technical evidence, and synthesize contributions across scientific and security disciplines.
• Clear scientific communication, independent research judgment, and ability to collaborate across science, engineering, and policy.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience applying materials or related physical-science expertise to AI safety through threat analysis, evaluations or red teaming, or mitigation design.
• Experience commissioning specialist research or assessing emerging technologies across disciplinary boundaries.
• Experience with computational materials science, advanced manufacturing, or automated synthesis and characterization.

Responsibilities

• Map misuse risks by connecting material properties, processing, and functional performance across materials domains to harmful applications, including emerging or overlooked uses.
• Assess how physical feasibility, processing complexity, manufacturing requirements, and actors' resources affect the plausibility and likelihood of misuse, including constraints AI could change.
• Distinguish established capabilities, plausible future developments, and weakly supported hypotheses, revising assessments as evidence changes across models, tools, and automated laboratories.
• Identify gaps in expertise, commission targeted scientific input with the expert-program team, and integrate specialist findings into a coherent assessment of the risk landscape.
• Translate dual-use judgments into policy boundaries, evaluation priorities, and mitigation requirements that support beneficial materials research.
• Work with threat modelers, evaluation researchers, and engineering and experimental colleagues to assess capabilities, interpret red-team findings, and evaluate safeguards.

Benefits

• Competitive base compensation with bonus potential and generous early-stage equity.
• Comprehensive benefits for full-time U.S. employees, including medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Employer-paid life and disability insurance.
• 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.
• Region-tailored comprehensive benefits 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