Contractor, Senior Research Associate, Cell Culture Operations

Your Impact at Lila

The Senior Research Associate, Cell Culture Operations will be responsible for the day-to-day execution and maintenance of mammalian cell culture activities that support LILA's research programs. This is a highly hands-on role focused on reliability, consistency, and operational excellence. The ideal candidate brings strong bench fundamentals, meticulous documentation habits, and the ability to support the translation of manual workflows into automation-compatible processes as LILA's capabilities evolve.

What You'll Be Building

• Perform routine and advanced mammalian cell culture (maintenance, expansion, passaging, cryopreservation, thawing) across a range of cell lines and cell types; monitor cell health and proactively resolve culture issues.
• Manage and maintain cell banks (inventory, quality checks, documentation) and oversee reagent/consumable procurement to ensure uninterrupted cell supply.
• Perform flow cytometry / FACS acquisition and data analysis to support cell characterization, quality checks, and downstream research needs.
• Author, maintain, and improve SOPs for cell culture workflows; identify opportunities to streamline operations and improve consistency.
• Support adoption of automated or semi-automated cell culture workflows, including protocol translation, run execution/troubleshooting, and performance verification.
• Coordinate with research and platform teams to align on cell supply needs, timelines, and specifications; support onboarding of new cell types and protocols as programs evolve.
• Maintain a clean, organized, and safe laboratory in accordance with biosafety guidelines (e.g., BSL-2).

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• B.S. or M.S. in Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, Bioengineering, or related discipline.
• 3+ years (B.S.) or 2+ years (M.S.) of relevant experience with a strong focus on mammalian cell culture.
• Demonstrated expertise in aseptic technique, routine and advanced cell culture, cell banking, and culture troubleshooting.
• Hands-on experience with cell culture liquid handling techniques.
• Experience with flow cytometry / FACS acquisition and data analysis.

Bonus Points For

• Experience culturing primary human or animal cells (e.g., PBMCs, T cells, tissue-derived primary cells).
• Experience with iPSC culture and maintenance (e.g., feeder-free systems, passaging techniques, pluripotency monitoring).
• Experience with cell engineering approaches such as lentiviral vector (LVV) transduction or CRISPR-based editing.
• Familiarity with inventory/LIMS platforms.

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.