Life Sciences Technical Program Manager

Your Impact at LILA

Lila Sciences is applying its autonomous science platform to some of the most complex challenges in biology and medicine — from protein therapeutics and nucleic acid design to antibody discovery and cell therapies. The Life Sciences experiment team is running programs where the pace of autonomous experimentation demands real operational rigor, and we're looking for a Technical Program Manager to provide it. You'll work closely with the Life Sciences domain lead who sets scientific strategy and direction, while you own the execution layer: the project plans, the cross-functional dependencies, and the blockers that need to be surfaced and resolved before they become problems. You won't be directing scientific work — you'll be creating the conditions for it to happen at speed and at scale. This is a role for someone who genuinely loves the craft of program management in complex, technical environments.

What You'll Be Building

• Own day-to-day program execution within the Life Sciences experiment team — maintaining project plans, tracking milestones, and ensuring agentic science programs are delivered on time and with rigor
• Serve as the primary operational interface between the Life Sciences team and platform partners (Automation, ML, Engineering) communicating needs, aligning on priorities, and keeping dependencies visible and resolved
• Translate scientific program goals into structured workstreams that enable autonomous experimentation to run efficiently and at scale
• Run program rituals including sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives with a bias toward purposeful meetings, documentation, and follow-through
• Partner with the Life Sciences domain lead to surface blockers, risks, and interdependencies early and drive them to resolution
• Support the delivery of commercial contracts by working with the Product & Revenue team to ensure program commitments are well-scoped, tracked, and clearly communicated to all stakeholders
• Contribute to capacity planning and resource coordination in partnership with scientific leadership

What You’ll Need to Succeed

• 10+ years of program or project management experience in a life sciences or biotechnology environment
• A Bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences, Bioengineering, or a related field
• A track record of managing multiple concurrent programs in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and energized by building programs from the ground up; early-stage start-up experience is a strong plus
• Demonstrated ability to coordinate across scientific and operational stakeholders and manage complex cross-functional dependencies
• Sufficient scientific fluency to understand Life Sciences program goals and communicate them clearly to partner teams
• Experience supporting commercial program delivery and working with external partners or customers
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills — able to break complex goals into clear, achievable units of work and keep stakeholders consistently well-informed

Bonus Points For

• Familiarity with project management tools such as Smartsheet, Asana, Jira, or similar
• PMP, PgMP, or agile certification (e.g., CSM, SAFe) is a plus