Life Sciences Technical Program Manager

Lila Sciences Lila Sciences · AI Frontier · One Charles Park, Cambridge, MA · Autonomous Science Platform

This role is for a Technical Program Manager in a Life Sciences team that uses an autonomous science platform. The TPM will own the execution layer, including project plans, cross-functional dependencies, and surfacing blockers, to enable scientific work to happen at speed and scale. The role requires strong program management experience in life sciences, coordination across stakeholders, and communication skills. While the team uses an autonomous science platform and agentic programs, the TPM's core function is program management, not direct AI/ML development.

What you'd actually do

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. Translate scientific program goals into structured workstreams that enable autonomous experimentation to run efficiently and at scale
  4. Run program rituals including sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives with a bias toward purposeful meetings, documentation, and follow-through
  5. Partner with the Life Sciences domain lead to surface blockers, risks, and interdependencies early and drive them to resolution

Skills

Required

  • 10+ years of program or project management experience in a life sciences or biotechnology environment
  • Bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences, Bioengineering, or a related field
  • 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

Nice to have

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

What the JD emphasized

  • 10+ years of program or project management experience in a life sciences or biotechnology environment
  • A track record of managing multiple concurrent programs in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and energized by building programs from the ground up