Senior / Principal Materials Scientist, AI Safety
$268k - $384k • Cambridge, MA USA; London, UK; San Francisco, CA USA • Full-time
Posted 10d ago
Job Location
Cambridge, MA USA; London, UK; San Francisco, CA USA
Remote Work Policy
On-site
Employment Type
Full-time
Categories
AI Research Engineer
About the job
Lila Sciences is building a talent-dense, high-agency AI safety team focused on identifying and mitigating risks from scientific superintelligence while preserving scientific discovery capabilities. The team's initial focus is to develop and implement a bespoke safety strategy tailored to Lila's specific goals and deployment strategies. This involves technical safety strategy development, broader ecosystem engagement, safety-focused evaluations, safety systems to mitigate risks, and a research agenda exploring long-term needs like overseeing superintelligent scientific systems. We are seeking a materials scientist to map risks across the materials science domain, connecting deep materials expertise with dual-use risk assessment to safeguard scientific AI.
Responsibilities
- Map misuse risks by connecting material properties, processing, and functional performance to harmful applications.
- Assess the impact of physical feasibility, processing complexity, manufacturing requirements, and actor resources on misuse plausibility.
- Distinguish between established capabilities, plausible future developments, and weakly supported hypotheses, updating assessments with new evidence.
- Identify expertise gaps, commission targeted scientific input, and integrate specialist findings into risk landscape assessments.
- Translate dual-use judgments into policy boundaries, evaluation priorities, and mitigation requirements for beneficial materials research.
- Collaborate with threat modelers, evaluation researchers, and engineering/experimental colleagues to assess capabilities, interpret red-team findings, and evaluate safeguards.
Requirements
- PhD or comparable experience in materials science or a related discipline, with a strong understanding of structure-property-processing-application relationships.
- Substantive experience assessing dual-use risks in areas such as nuclear proliferation, radiological misuse, weapons-related capabilities, or other consequential materials risks.
- Sound judgment regarding physical possibility, practical feasibility, and uncertainty, with the ability to investigate risks beyond 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 collaboration skills across science, engineering, and policy.
Benefits
- Competitive base compensation with bonus potential
- Generous early-stage equity
- Comprehensive U.S. 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
- Educational assistance program
- Commuter benefits (including bike share memberships for office-based employees)
- Company-subsidized lunch program
- International benefits tailored to region