Chief of Staff to the CEO

Your Impact at LILA

Lila Sciences is seeking an experienced Chief of Staff to partner with our Founder and CEO, Geoff von Maltzahn, in advancing the company's strategic and scientific priorities. Lila is building the world's first scientific superintelligence platform, applying AI across the scientific method to accelerate discovery in life, chemistry, and materials science. As the company scales, the Office of the CEO requires a senior operator with real technical depth, ideally someone who has built or led inside a technical organization themselves, able to think alongside the CEO on the company's hardest scientific and strategic questions. This is a support role. It sharpens the CEO's thinking and prep and does not replace the technical judgment of the CTO, CPO, or other technical leaders.

The Chief of Staff will serve as a thought partner to the CEO and a connector across the executive team, helping shape and stress-test the scientific bets the company is making. The role combines strategic counsel, technical judgment, and high-trust communication, and requires sound judgment, technical fluency, and the ability to navigate ambiguity at the pace of an early-stage, science-driven company.

Responsibilities span scientific and strategic decision support, board and investor preparation, executive team alignment, oversight of cross-functional initiatives, and stewardship of the CEO's communications and external engagements. The successful candidate will bring deep technical training and hands-on experience, ideally as a founder or in another highly technical capacity, combined with significant experience in senior strategic roles within technology- or science-driven organizations.

This position is based at Lila's Cambridge headquarters at One Charles Park, in person and onsite with the CEO, with willingness to travel as the role requires.

What You'll Be Building

• Serve as a sounding board for the CEO on the company's hardest scientific bets, from which research directions to pursue to how much weight to put on an early result.
• Pressure-test scientific and technical tradeoffs with the CEO before they reach the executive team or the board. Sharpen the reasoning so the decision that comes out is a better one.
• Work with the strategy function and the technical leadership team to turn the company's hardest scientific questions into clear plans and priorities.
• Prepare the CEO for high-stakes scientific conversations with the board, investors, and outside collaborators. Make sure the reasoning behind each decision holds up under scrutiny.
• Own the prep for board meetings, investor updates, and fundraising. Turn the company's scientific and technical progress into materials that land, and make sure the CEO walks in ready.
• Act as the connective tissue between the CEO, the executive team, and the wider company. Make sure scientific context and decisions move fast and nothing important falls through.
• Drive the hardest calls to closure. Cut through competing priorities to the few decisions that matter, and make sure they stick.

What You'll Need to Succeed

• 8+ years of progressive experience, including time as a founder, Chief of Staff, function head, or senior operator at a high-growth company. You've helped shape hard technical or scientific decisions before, ideally in an AI or science-driven environment.
• A PhD, founding experience at a technical company, or equivalent hands-on training in a scientific or AI domain. You engage with the CEO and the research team as a peer.
• You operate without a playbook. This is the first company of its kind, and fast-scaling labs, an active raise, and genuinely hard problems energize you rather than overwhelm you.
• You bring rigor and follow-through to fast-moving, ambitious teams, moving from strategy to the details without missing a step.
• The instinct to push back. You challenge the CEO and the executive team on priorities, strategy, org design, and execution quality, and you get teams to commit and move.
• High emotional intelligence. You build trust fast across scientists, operators, and executives, and you drive outcomes across a leadership team that doesn't report to you.
• Exceptional communicator. You make complex, technical work legible, and you can draft in another executive's voice, from a board deck to an all-hands.
• You thrive in high-stakes complexity. Fast-scaling labs, an active raise, and tackling genuinely hard problems with smart people energize you.
• High discretion, professionalism, and trustworthiness, commensurate with the access this role carries.
• Onsite at One Charles Park in Cambridge, with availability to travel.