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 operational 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 capable of extending the CEO's reach across strategy, execution, and external engagement.

The Chief of Staff will serve as a thought partner to the CEO and a connector across the executive team, advancing the organization's most consequential initiatives from concept through execution. The role combines strategic counsel, operational rigor, 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 strategic planning and decision support, board and investor preparation, executive team operating cadence, oversight of cross-functional initiatives, and stewardship of the CEO's communications and external engagements. The successful candidate will bring deep technical training in a scientific or AI discipline, 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

• Run the leadership team's operating rhythm: quarterly and annual planning, KPI reviews, and follow-through. Keep the team honest about the few priorities that actually move the company.
• Work hand in hand with the strategy function to turn the company's hardest questions into clear plans and priorities the leadership team can act on.
• Design how the CEO and executive team spends its time, from agendas to decisions to follow-up, so the highest-leverage questions get the attention.
• Own the prep for board meetings, investor updates, and fundraising. Turn the company's 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 context and decisions move fast and nothing important falls through.
• Drive decisions to closure. Cut through competing priorities to the few calls that matter, force the decision, and make sure it sticks.
• Turn the chiefs of staff and EA network across the leadership team into one operating layer, with shared cadence, shared standards, and a single source of truth.

What You'll Need to Succeed

• 8+ years of progressive experience, including time as a Chief of Staff, function head, or senior operator at a high-growth company. You've built and run a company's operating system before, ideally in an AI or science-driven environment.
• Technical fluency in a scientific or AI domain. You engage credibly with researchers and make the science legible to everyone else. Advanced training is a plus, not a requirement.
• 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 think in systems and still do the work. 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.