Sr. Front End Engineer, Applied AI

Company Summary

Lila Sciences is a privately held, early-stage technology company pioneering the application of artificial intelligence to transform every aspect of the scientific method. Lila is backed by Flagship Pioneering, which brings the courage, long-term vision, and resources needed to realize unreasonable results. Join our mission-driven team and contribute to the future of science.

Our Life Sciences effort is leveraging AI and high-throughput automation for valuable therapeutic discovery and development across biological modalities.

At Lila, we are uniquely cross-functional and collaborative. We are actively reimagining the way teams work together and communicate. Therefore, we seek individuals with an inclusive mindset and a diversity of thought. Our teams thrive in unstructured and creative environments. All voices are heard because we know that experience comes in many forms, skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way.

If this sounds like an environment you’d love to work in, even if you only have some of the experience listed below, please apply.

The Role: 

We are seeking a Senior Frontend Software Engineer to join our Applied AI group and help shape the user-facing components of our cutting-edge AI-driven scientific platform. In this role, you will collaborate closely with software engineers, ML researchers, and scientists to build intuitive interfaces that simplify complex AI workflows. As part of a growing team, you will have an immediate impact on how our scientific community interacts with advanced AI frameworks and tools. 

Your work will be crucial to ensuring our end-users—ranging from computational biologists to experimentalists in the physical sciences—can effectively harness AI-driven capabilities in a seamless, accessible manner. If you are passionate about building high-performance, user-friendly web applications that empower novel scientific discoveries, we’d love to hear from you! 

Key Responsibilities: 

• Front-End Architecture & Development: Design and implement scalable front-end architectures using modern frameworks (e.g., React) that interact with back-end AI services. 

• User Experience & Interface Design: Collaborate with product leads and UX designers to translate complex workflows into intuitive, engaging user experiences. 

• Integration with Agentic AI Platform: Work closely with the Senior SWE and ML teams to integrate user-facing components with AI-driven agentic systems, ensuring data flows seamlessly between front-end and back-end services. 

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with domain scientists, data engineers, and product managers to gather feedback and iterate quickly on UI/UX improvements. 

• Continuous Improvement: Stay current with emerging front-end tools, frameworks, and industry trends. Propose and champion improvements that enhance development workflows and end-user experiences. 

 Qualifications: 

• Educational Background: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. 

• Professional Experience: 3+ years of experience developing production-grade front-end applications, ideally with frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular. 

• JavaScript/TypeScript Proficiency: Solid knowledge of modern JavaScript (ES6+) and TypeScript for building robust, maintainable codebases.  

• UI/UX Fundamentals: Demonstrated ability to translate design requirements into visually polished, responsive, and accessible user interfaces. 

• API Integration: Comfortable working with RESTful or GraphQL APIs; able to handle real-time data streams and large data sets in a performant manner. 

• Communication & Collaboration: Proven track record of effectively working with cross-functional teams, explaining complex ideas, and incorporating diverse perspectives. 

 Preferred Qualifications: 

• Experience with production AI/ML applications: Prior work with AI/ML systems, including building, deploying, and maintaining large-scale models in real-world environments. Familiarity with MLOps best practices, model versioning, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), and monitoring AI services in production is highly valued.

• Hands-On Familiarity with Latest AI Concepts: Exposure to AI technologies such as Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), or agentic frameworks—and how they integrate into a software platform. 

• Domain Background: Exposure to life sciences, material sciences, or related fields. 

• Technical Leadership: Experience leading or mentoring a team and making key architecture decisions. 

• Previous experience in a fast-paced startup environment: Comfortable adapting quickly, working iteratively, and thriving in situations with evolving priorities and minimal structure. 

Working at Lila, you would have access to advanced technology in the areas of:

• AI experimental design and simulation
• Automated liquid handling and instrumentation
• Generative molecular design

More About Flagship Pioneering

Flagship Pioneering is a biotechnology company that invents and builds platform companies, each with the potential for multiple products that transform human health or sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, Flagship has originated and fostered more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in more than $90 billion in aggregate value. Many of the companies Flagship has founded have addressed humanity’s most urgent challenges: vaccinating billions of people against COVID-19, curing intractable diseases, improving human health, preempting illness, and feeding the world by improving the resiliency and sustainability of agriculture.  Flagship has been recognized twice on FORTUNE’s “Change the World” list, an annual ranking of companies that have made a positive social and environmental impact through activities that are part of their core business strategies, and has been twice named to Fast Company’s annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies. Learn more about Flagship at www.flagshippioneering.com.

Flagship Pioneering and our ecosystem companies are 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.

At Flagship, we recognize there is no perfect candidate. If you have some of the experience listed above but not all, please apply anyway. Experience comes in many forms, skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way. We are dedicated to building diverse and inclusive teams and look forward to learning more about your unique background.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Flagship Pioneering and its affiliated Flagship Lab companies (collectively, “FSP”) do not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to FSP or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Flagship Pioneering’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of FSP, and FSP will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.