Your Impact at LILA
We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer II, Enterprise Auth Platform to own critical systems across two areas: the enterprise lifecycle (multi-tenancy, auth, auditability) and the developer ecosystem (public APIs, SDKs, MCPs, and bring-your-own integrations) that let customers and developers build on Lila. Our internal scientists across both physical and life sciences are first-class customers of this platform, so you'll build for them as directly as for external developers.
This is a high-autonomy role: you'll own outcomes, ship regularly, and operate with technical judgment about tradeoffs.
What You'll Be Building
- Multi-Tenancy & Authorization. Build secure tenant isolation, authentication, authorization, and audit across customer organizations. Implement the access boundaries and isolation guarantees that enterprise and regulated (e.g. GxP, FedRAMP) deployments require. Build resilient backend services in Python/FastAPI. Own schema design for multi-tenant data, tenant-aware query patterns, and operational correctness in a regulated environment.
- Tenant Self-Serve & Lifecycle. Build the services behind tenant provisioning, self-serve administration, and the customer onboarding lifecycle. Support billing, pricing, and metering surfaces for enterprise customers.
- Public & Agent-Facing APIs. Own and evolve Lila's public APIs (REST, streaming, async) designed for both human developers and autonomous agents as first-class consumers. Ship SDKs and define the tool/function interfaces agents call.
- MCP & Agent Integration. Build the integration paths that connect MCPs, agents, and data into the platform — including how customers bring their own MCPs, agents, and data, and how those integrations are scoped, isolated, and trusted within a tenant.
- 7+ years of backend software engineering, with meaningful experience in APIs, backend services, or platform infrastructure.
- Strong expertise in one or more of: API design and versioning, multi-tenancy, authentication/authorization, or backend services at scale.
- Solid in Python (FastAPI), Kubernetes, AWS, databases (SQL or document).
- You care about developer experience — you know what makes APIs easy or painful. You write clear errors and think about backward compatibility.
- Ship working code regularly. Debug production issues. Own systems end-to-end.
- Work well across teams you'll have real overlap with infra, data, apps, and science teams. Our internal scientists, across both physical and life sciences, are first-class customers of the platform, so you'll build for them as directly as for external developers. Communicate tradeoffs clearly and make decisions under ambiguity.
What You'll Need to Succeed
- 7+ years of backend software engineering, with meaningful experience in APIs, backend services, or platform infrastructure.
- Strong expertise in one or more of: API design and versioning, multi-tenancy, authentication/authorization, or backend services at scale.
- Solid in Python (FastAPI), Kubernetes, AWS, databases (SQL or document).
- You care about developer experience — you know what makes APIs easy or painful. You write clear errors and think about backward compatibility.
- Ship working code regularly. Debug production issues. Own systems end-to-end.
- Work well across teams you'll have real overlap with infra, data, apps, and science teams. Our internal scientists, across both physical and life sciences, are first-class customers of the platform, so you'll build for them as directly as for external developers. Communicate tradeoffs clearly and make decisions under ambiguity.
Bonus Points For
- Built or maintained multi-tenant SaaS platforms with audit, compliance, or isolation requirements (SOC 2, HIPAA, GxP, FedRAMP).
- Shipped public developer platforms, APIs, or SDKs and understand what makes integrations sticky.
- Familiarity with MCP, OpenAPI, or OIDC/OAuth 2.0.
- Worked on tenant isolation patterns (row-level security, schema per tenant, search-path isolation).
- Experience with policy-based authorization (OPA) or externalized authz.
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.
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.
Skills Required
- 7+ years of backend software engineering experience
- Meaningful experience with APIs, backend services, or platform infrastructure
- Strong expertise in API design and versioning, multi-tenancy, authentication and authorization, or backend services at scale
- Proficiency in Python and FastAPI
- Experience with Kubernetes
- Experience with AWS
- Experience with SQL or document databases
- Ability to design developer-friendly APIs, write clear errors, and support backward compatibility
- Ability to ship code regularly, debug production issues, and own systems end-to-end
- Ability to collaborate across infrastructure, data, applications, and science teams
- Experience with multi-tenant SaaS platforms, audit, compliance, or isolation requirements
- Experience shipping public developer platforms, APIs, or SDKs
- Familiarity with MCP, OpenAPI, or OIDC/OAuth 2.0
- Experience with tenant isolation patterns such as row-level security or schema-per-tenant
- Experience with policy-based authorization such as OPA or externalized authorization
What We Do
Lila is a technology company pioneering the application of artificial intelligence to transform every aspect of the scientific method.
