Senior / Principal Chemist, AI Safety
Cambridge, MA USA · London · San Francisco, CA USA · Alewife, Cambridge · Europe · San Francisco · USD 148,000-208,000 · Onsite · Posted Oct 5, 2026
At a glance
- Workplace
- Onsite
- Location
- Cambridge, MA USA · London · San Francisco, CA USA · Alewife, Cambridge · Europe · San Francisco
- Salary
- USD 148,000-208,000 · Base salary
About the role
- LILA Sciences is seeking a Senior or Principal Chemist to join their AI safety team to identify and mitigate risks associated with scientific superintelligence.
- The role involves mapping chemical misuse risks, assessing scientific feasibility of threats, and translating risk judgments into policy boundaries and mitigation requirements.
- You will collaborate with threat modelers, evaluation researchers, and mitigation teams to safeguard scientific AI while preserving its discovery capabilities.
Responsibilities
- Map chemical misuse risks across scientific models, agents, and automated experimentation.
- Assess how scientific feasibility, practical complexity, and actor resources affect the likelihood of misuse.
- Distinguish between established capabilities, plausible future developments, and weakly supported hypotheses.
- Identify gaps in coverage and frame questions for consultants and specialist organizations.
- Integrate findings from external specialists into defensible risk assessments.
- Translate scientific risk judgments into dual-use policy boundaries and evaluation priorities.
- Partner with threat modelers and mitigation teams to design assessments and test safeguards.
- Interpret red-team findings to inform safety strategies.
Requirements
- PhD or comparable experience in synthetic chemistry or a closely related discipline.
- Substantial research or applied work in molecular design, medicinal chemistry, inorganic/organometallic chemistry, synthesis, process development, or formulations.
- Substantive experience assessing chemical dual-use risks, such as national security, export controls, or CWC tracking.
- Strong scientific judgment regarding feasibility, uncertainty, and practical constraints.
- Ability to investigate unfamiliar questions and recognize the limits of expertise.
- Ability to identify appropriate specialists and critically assess their evidence.
- Clear scientific communication and independent research judgment.
- Ability to collaborate across science, engineering, and policy disciplines.
Preferred qualifications
- Prior experience applying domain expertise to AI safety through scientific analysis, threat models, evaluation, red-teaming, or mitigation design.
- Experience commissioning specialist research or coordinating external scientific collaborators.
- Experience with automated chemistry, scientific modeling, or the translation of computational findings into physical experiments.
Benefits
- Competitive base compensation
- Bonus potential
- Generous early-stage equity
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Employer-paid life and disability insurance
- Flexible time off
- Paid parental leave
- Educational assistance program
- Commuter benefits
- Company subsidized lunch program
Skills
- Synthetic Chemistry
- Molecular Design
- Medicinal Chemistry
- Organometallic Chemistry
- Process Development
- Formulations
- Dual-use Risk Assessment
- AI Safety
- Automated Chemistry
- Scientific Modeling
