Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Applied AI
Lila Sciences10 hours ago
Base Salary
$252k - $336k/yr
Responsibilities
- Lead model post-training efforts using SFT and reinforcement learning methods such as DPO, PPO, and GRPO.
- Build and operate evaluation loops measuring model quality, reliability, and customer fit.
- Translate customer learnings, data signals, and evaluation results into model improvement cycles.
- Partner with AI researchers to translate model advances into reliable capabilities.
- Work with software teams to integrate model behavior into end-to-end product workflows.
- Debug complex model failures using traces, evaluations, customer context, scientific feedback, data, and logs.
- Mentor engineers and share reusable patterns for model adaptation, evaluation, and deployment.
- Lead technical work across research and engineering teams.
Requirements
- At least 2–3 years of hands-on post-training experience and evaluation system design.
- Strong software engineering skills in Python and modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch.
- Experience debugging ambiguous, high-stakes model behavior using data, traces, logs, and qualitative feedback.
- Deep familiarity with large language models, multimodal models, or agentic AI systems.
- Clear communication skills for translating customer needs into technical approaches and explaining complex model behavior.
- Preferred experience adapting models for customer-facing or production workflows in scientific, technical, or data-intensive domains.
- Preferred experience with RL post-training such as RLHF, GRPO, or tool-augmented RL.
- Preferred experience building evaluation harnesses, model monitoring, or quality dashboards.
- Experience training mixture-of-experts architectures is a bonus.
- A track record of mentoring engineers and serving as a go-to technical expert is preferred.
Benefits
- Full-time U.S. employees receive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
- Benefits include employer-paid life and disability insurance, flexible time off, generous company-wide holidays, and paid parental leave.
- The company provides educational assistance, commuter benefits including bike share memberships for office-based employees, and a subsidized lunch program.
- International employees receive a comprehensive benefits program tailored to their region.
- The compensation package includes bonus potential and early-stage equity.
Categories
About Lila Sciences
Lila Sciences builds an AI-driven research platform and autonomous lab systems for life science, chemistry, and materials R&D teams. Its products combine large AI models with robotic instruments to plan, run, and analyze experiments, integrating into customer-specific scientific workflows. The privately held company serves pharma, materials, and energy organizations and is venture-backed, including a Series A financing in 2025.