Director / Senior Director, Intellectual Property, Life Sciences

Your Impact at LILA Lila Sciences is building an autonomous scientific platform and applying it across therapeutics, materials, and other scientific domains. Our life sciences programs run from early research through candidate selection, often in collaboration with external partners, which makes strong intellectual property work essential. We are looking for a life sciences patent lawyer to own IP strategy for these programs end to end. This is not a docket-management role. You will decide what gets filed and how it is claimed, and you will help shape the IP positions that support our commercial agreements. The work spans both halves of a life sciences IP practice that are often split between two people: building and prosecuting a global patent portfolio, and advising on the IP terms of collaborations, licensing, and financings. If you have done both and want to do them for a single company rather than a client list, this role is built for you. You will be the senior life sciences voice on a small, high-leverage team, with real scope to build. What You'll Be Building - Own global patent strategy for therapeutic programs, including composition-of-matter, formulation, delivery, method-of-use, and platform claims. - Direct outside counsel on drafting and prosecution across major jurisdictions; set claim strategy rather than relay it. - Design claim architecture that protects programs at each stage of their life cycle. - Lead patentability, validity, and freedom-to-operate analyses; translate findings into go/no-go and design-around recommendations. - Serve as IP lead on collaboration, option, license, and services agreements, including the IP terms that follow from them. - Run IP due diligence for financings and partner transactions, including portfolio schedules, chain of title, and license obligations. - Advise on inbound licenses for third-party software, data, models, and research tools, and build the clearance process that supports compliant use. - Mentor junior legal team members and, over time, build and manage the life sciences IP function. What You'll Need to Succeed - J.D. and active bar admission, with USPTO registration. - 12+ years of substantive patent experience in the life sciences, in a law firm, in-house, or a combination. - Technical degree in chemistry, biochemistry, molecular or cellular biology, immunology, or a closely related field. - Demonstrated ownership of global patent portfolios for biopharmaceutical products, with direct responsibility for claim strategy. - Experience across a range of therapeutic modalities. - Track record producing patentability, validity, and FTO assessments that supported real business decisions. - Experience advising on IP aspects of collaborations, licensing, acquisitions, or financings, including diligence and negotiating provisions. Bonus Points For - Experience with option-based or milestone-based collaboration structures. - Experience maintaining portfolio positions across related programs and partners. - Familiarity with structure-based similarity and analog definitions as used in contracts. - Experience with PTAB post-grant proceedings or district court and ITC litigation support. - Exposure to AI or computational drug discovery, including related inventorship questions. Compensation We offer competitive base compensation with bonus potential and generous early-stage equity. Your final offer will reflect your background, expertise, and expected impact. U.S. Benefits. Full-time U.S. employees receive a comprehensive benefits program including medical, dental, and vision coverage; employer-paid life and disability insurance; flexible time off with generous company wide holidays; paid parental leave; an educational assistance program; commuter benefits, including bike share memberships for office based employees; and a company subsidized lunch program. International Benefits. Full-time employees outside the U.S. receive a comprehensive benefits program tailored to their region. USD salary ranges apply only to U.S.-based positions; international salaries are set to local market. Expected Base Salary Range $262,000—$400,000 USD 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.