Senior / Principal Chemist, AI Safety
Hybrid (Cambridge, MA; London, UK; San Francisco, CA)$148k - $208kfull-timePosted 2w ago
About the role
Chemist focused on mapping chemical risks in the context of dual-use AI safety, connecting deep chemistry expertise with risk assessment to safeguard advances in chemical sciences as LILA develops autonomous scientific systems.
Responsibilities
- Map chemical misuse risks across scientific models, agents and automated experimentation, connecting scientific advances to harmful applications and identifying emerging or overlooked pathways.
- Assess how scientific feasibility, practical complexity and actors' expertise or resources affect the plausibility and likelihood of misuse, including which constraints AI could change.
- Distinguish established capabilities, plausible future developments and weakly supported hypotheses, updating assessments as scientific evidence and AI capabilities evolve.
- Identify gaps in coverage, frame questions for consultants and specialist organizations, and assess and integrate their findings with support from the expert-program team.
- Translate scientific risk judgments into dual-use policy boundaries, evaluation priorities and mitigation requirements that preserve beneficial chemistry.
- Partner with threat modelers, evaluation researchers and mitigation teams to design informative assessments, interpret red-team findings and test safeguards.
Qualifications
- Deep expertise (a PhD, or comparable experience) in synthetic chemistry or a closely related discipline, demonstrated through substantial research or applied work and sound interpretation of experimental evidence.
- Background in molecular design and medicinal chemistry, inorganic and organometallic chemistry, synthesis, process development and formulations, or other relevant sub-fields.
- Substantive experience assessing chemical dual-use risks (e.g. across national security, export controls, or other chemical risk tracking such as the CWC).
- Strong scientific judgment about feasibility, uncertainty and practical constraints, including the ability to investigate unfamiliar questions and recognize the limits of your expertise.
- The ability to identify appropriate specialists, critically assess their evidence and combine findings across disciplines into defensible risk assessments.
- Clear scientific communication, independent research judgment and an ability to collaborate across science, engineering and policy.
Skills
Required:Chemical dual-use risk assessmentScientific judgment and risk framing
Benefits
- Full base compensation with bonus potential and generous early-stage equity.
- U.S. Benefits: medical, dental, vision; employer-paid life and disability; flexible time off with holidays; parental leave; educational assistance; commuter benefits; lunch program.
- International Benefits: regionally tailored programs; USD salary ranges apply to U.S.-based positions; international salaries set to local market.
Last updated Oct 7, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Lila Sciences
Pioneering Scientific Superintelligence
Pioneering Scientific Superintelligence to solve humankind’s greatest challenges.
Scientific SuperintelligenceAIAutonomous LabsLife SciencesChemical SciencesMaterials Sciences
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