Director / Senior Director of New Product Planning, Physical Science

Your Impact at LILA

Lila Sciences is hiring a Director / Senior Director, New Product Planning of Physical Science to help shape Lila Origins, our company and asset creation arm which partners to translate scientific vision into molecules, materials, and real-world ventures. As a member of a small, highly cross-functional team, this role brings the commercial voice to life. The focus is on assessing where Lila's platform can produce differentiated assets and shaping how those opportunities become ventures, partnerships, or programs.

What You'll Be Building

• Source and evaluate new physical science opportunities for Origins, screening for scientific differentiation, commercial viability, and fit with Lila's platform capabilities
• Track materials science, chemistry, energy systems, and advanced manufacturing trends, including platform breakthroughs, pipeline movement, and deal activity across deep tech and industry, and translate signal into actionable views for Origins
• Match materials platforms and chemical or physical process innovations to application areas using technical rationale, competitive landscape, and unmet need, and recommend where Origins should concentrate effort
• Build and own market sizing, end-market demand, and deal economic models that inform go / no-go decisions on candidate ventures and partnerships
• Develop specifications and early commercial theses for assets under consideration, in partnership with Science, Product, and Corporate Development
• Run primary and secondary research including expert interviews, competitor tracking, and customer and supply chain landscape analysis to stress-test assumptions and sharpen recommendations
• Shape deal structures and partnership constructs alongside Corporate Development, translating commercial logic into terms that work for Lila and counterparties
• Contribute to Origins' strategic thesis by synthesizing what we learn across opportunities into recommendations on application area focus, platform bets, and partnership models

What You'll Need to Succeed

• 7 or more years in new product planning, commercial assessment, asset strategy, or business development inside a materials company, specialty chemicals organization, energy technology firm, deep tech startup, or physical science investor, with a track record of shaping go / no-go calls on early-stage assets
• Strong scientific literacy in physical sciences including materials, chemistry, physics, or advanced manufacturing; able to engage substantively with scientists and external experts and translate technical nuance into commercial implications
• Demonstrated ability to match platform technologies to application areas, with a clear point of view on where technical fit, unmet need, and competitive landscape converge
• Hands-on modeling experience across market sizing, demand forecasting, and deal economics; comfortable building models from scratch and defending assumptions
• Active fluency in industry trends, platform movement, and deal activity across materials, energy, and deep tech
• Strong written and verbal communication; able to distill complex commercial and scientific analyses into crisp recommendations for senior leadership
• Genuinely energized by building structure in undefined spaces; comfortable moving forward with limited oversight and a strong instinct for bringing clarity to ambiguous situations

Bonus Points For

• Advanced degree in a physical science discipline such as materials science, chemistry, chemical engineering, or physics, or an MBA with a deep focus on deep tech
• Well-connected across the materials, deep tech, and investment communities
• Hands-on use of AI tools in your daily work with a clear point of view on how AI is reshaping materials discovery and asset creation