Principal Engineer, AI Security
Lila Sciences
$252,000 - $374,000 / year
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Description
Your Impact at LILA
Lila Sciences is building autonomous systems for scientific discovery, and the AI infrastructure behind that work needs security built in from the start. This role sits on the IT & Security team and owns security engineering for Lila's AI and ML systems, from training and inference pipelines to model registries, MCP servers, and agent runtimes.
As the senior individual contributor for AI security, you will translate the AI security roadmap into delivered controls, drive vulnerability remediation to closure, and reduce risk across the full AI lifecycle: data, models, pipelines, and agentic systems. The work is hands on, with technical depth across cloud security, supply chain security, and AI-specific threat models.
The role is deeply cross-functional. You will partner with AI Platform, AI Research, ML Operations, Science, and AI Safety so security shows up at design time rather than after the fact. Success looks like AI infrastructure that stays continuously compliant, measurable reduction in open risk, and engineering teams that treat security as part of how they build.
What You'll Be Building
- Turn the AI security roadmap into delivered controls with measurable outcomes
- Design and implement security controls across training and inference pipelines, model registries, MCP servers, and agent runtimes
- Keep AI infrastructure continuously compliant against internal standards and applicable frameworks
- Drive vulnerability remediation across AI infrastructure, models, and dependencies to closure with system owners
- Reduce risk across data, models, pipelines, and agentic systems through threat modeling, control design, and adversarial assessment
- Partner with AI Platform, AI Research, ML Operations, Science, and AI Safety so security is embedded at design time
What You'll Need to Succeed
- Strong background in security engineering, cloud security, or DevSecOps, with hands-on experience securing production infrastructure
- Working knowledge of AI/ML systems and the ML lifecycle, plus AI-specific risks such as prompt injection, model and data poisoning, insecure agent tooling, and inference-time threats
- Experience with software supply chain security and dependency and vulnerability management
- Experience implementing data security controls (classification, data flow mapping, access control, encryption) in cloud environments
- Proven ability to partner across engineering teams and drive cross-functional remediation to closure
- Comfort operating with ambiguity in a fast-moving research environment
Bonus Points For
- Hands-on AWS security experience
- Experience with SBOM tooling at scale
- Familiarity with AI governance and assurance frameworks such as NIST AI RMF
- Experience with MAESTRO-style threat modeling for agentic systems
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.
Benefits
- health insurance
- vision insurance
- stock options
- parental leave
- disability insurance
About this role
Lila Sciences is securing the AI infrastructure behind its autonomous scientific discovery systems, and this role owns that mission end-to-end. As Principal Engineer for AI Security, you'll translate the company's AI security roadmap into implemented controls across training and inference pipelines, model registries, MCP servers, and agent runtimes. The work spans threat modeling, vulnerability remediation, compliance, and hands-on security engineering—moving security left so it's embedded at design time rather than bolted on afterward.
You'll need strong production security experience in cloud environments and DevSecOps, paired with working knowledge of the ML lifecycle and AI-specific threats like prompt injection, model poisoning, and inference-time attacks. Supply chain security, data controls, and the ability to drive cross-functional remediation are core to the role. AWS security experience, SBOM tooling, and familiarity with AI governance frameworks like NIST AI RMF are valuable additions. The position is deeply collaborative, requiring you to partner across AI Platform, Research, ML Operations, and Safety teams to embed security into how they build.
This is an in-office role in Cambridge, MA, with a base salary of $252,000–$374,000 and equity. It suits someone who thrives in a fast-moving research environment, can operate with ambiguity, and wants to shape how security gets built into cutting-edge AI systems from the ground up.
How this employer is doing
solid
- H1B: Sponsors Visas
- Recently Raised Funding
- Sponsors Visas
In the news
Lila Sciences in talks for $2B funding at $8.5B valuation - Bloomberg, Investing.com
This role's local market on JobMinglr
Pay for this role
$252,000 to $374,000 per year
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