Director/ Senior Director, Product, Materials Chemistry
$168,000–$272,000 year
On-siteCambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Job Summary
Set the long-term product vision, roadmap, and portfolio priorities for Lila's materials-chemistry portfolio spanning organic and soft-materials programs. Translate frontier organic and polymer chemistry capability into commercial materials programs by defining target product profiles across synthesis, formulation, characterization, and scale-up for partners in CPG, specialty chemicals, electronics, textiles, and industrial coatings. Drive product execution from concept to launch across chemistry, simulation, automation, data engineering, and ML. Represent product to executives, scientific leaders, partners, and customers as the senior external voice for the domain. Own commercial outcomes end-to-end, including opportunity shaping, proposal development, deal closure, and revenue generation. Define success metrics and milestones, reporting progress clearly to leadership.
Required Qualifications
- MS, PhD, or equivalent experience in synthetic organic or polymer chemistry
- genuine bench fluency in retrosynthesis, mechanisms, named transformations and reactions (e.g., Suzuki and Buchwald-Hartwig couplings, RAFT, ATRP, etc.)
- characterization (NMR, LC-MS, HPLC, GPC, DSC, rheology)
- Track record of translating organic/polymer chemistry from molecules to commercialized materials products
- 7+ years of product leadership (PM, Group PM, Product Lead) building and launching complex technical products: materials systems, scientific software or hardware, simulation platforms, data products, or ML- enabled systems
- Deep understanding of chemistry and materials R&D workflows: experimental iteration, instrumentation, data quality, and scale-up constraints
- Strong executive communication: clear storytelling and decisions legible to technical and non-technical audiences
- Highly collaborative leadership style, with the ability to influence across research, engineering, operations, and commercial teams
- Output- and impact-focused, driven by delivered results against mission and program goals
- Must be a product focused chemist who speaks the language of organic synthesis and/or polymer chemistry, not a medicinal chemist whose pull-through is therapeutic small molecules
Desired Qualifications
- A track record defining and executing TPPs and product strategies for scientific platforms (software, hardware, and workflows), not just standalone applications
- Experience building products at the intersection of LLMs / agentic systems and chemistry or materials R&D workflows, with a point of view on where these tools actually change throughput and decision quality in the lab (retrosynthesis, molecular design, formulation optimization)
- Direct experience with external partners or customers in materials-intensive sectors (CPG and specialty chemicals, electronics and displays, coatings, textiles, plastics, energy)
- Deep domain knowledge in one or more of: homogeneous catalysis and ligand design, organic electronic materials, surfactant and formulation science, non-PFAS coatings, or membranes
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