Associate Director / Director, Customer Program Management, Physical Sciences

About the role

This role leads the end to end journey for complex physical sciences customers at Lila. You design how programs move from initial contact through steady expansion inside high value engagements. You translate intricate science into coordinated action with structured clarity. The position sits at the center of multi year, deeply technical, consultative customer partnerships. You act as the primary face of LILA to the customer while coordinating across internal teams. You define the strategic narrative for each engagement, ensuring that scientific ambition aligns with executable delivery. You own the continuous calibration of scope, risk, and expectations throughout the life of demanding physical sciences programs. You build the repeatable structures that allow Lila to scale complex delivery without losing coherence or quality.

Key facts

What you will do

Map each engagement intake, define scope, align teams, and guide expectations before work begins. Construct program architecture, coordinating experimental design, automation, and data workflows so milestones hold. Review outcomes, steer conversations, and resolve blockers to keep trust and delivery quality intact. Ship solutions, ensuring handoffs stabilize, documentation completes, and value moves cleanly into customer workflows. Partner with commercial and science partners, aligning roadmap priorities and expanding engagement value responsibly. Translate scientific constraints into clear requirements, protect scope, and balance tradeoffs under uncertainty. Maintain operational discipline across timelines, dependencies, and risks so projects progress predictably at scale. Champion delivery infrastructure, creating templates, tools, and routines that future programs can reuse quickly. Conduct proactive discovery sessions to surface latent needs and technical constraints before formal commitment. Establish clear decision pathways and escalation triggers to prevent stalled approvals and misaligned ownership. Drive the creation of modular experimental packages that can be iterated upon across extended timelines. Synthesize complex data into narratives that help internal and external stakeholders understand progress and setbacks.

What you will own

You will be the primary conduit to the customer, owning the health and trajectory of the relationship over time. You will translate complex internal program status into clear, structured communication for the customer. You will surface and steer milestones, risks, and decisions while running effective program meetings and decision forums. You will hold steering committees, milestone reviews, and deliverable handoffs, navigating difficult conversations such as delays, quality incidents, and scope changes. You will identify and shape opportunities to grow the engagement, partnering with business development and product to bring them to life. You will coordinate a cross functional team of teams that speaks different technical languages. You will structure information flow so the right information reaches the right people at the right time. You will exercise strategic judgment, holding many considerations at once and charting a course when there is no obviously right answer. You will define and stand up the operating model for customer delivery at Lila, building processes, tooling, and best practices. You will act as the central integrator for all customer facing artifacts, ensuring consistency and clarity across touchpoints. You will own the end to end tracking of commitments, dependencies, and outcomes against program goals.

Requirements

Bring deep experience managing complex scientific programs across multiple concurrent projects. Communicate clearly with researchers, engineers, and executives while navigating ambiguous evolving problems. Own customer health, shaping growth opportunities and navigating difficult tradeoff or delay conversations. Coordinate cross functional teams, keeping alignment around objectives, decisions, and shared truth. Demonstrate comfort working with highly technical subject matter where details matter and precision is required. Show a record of delivering complex engagements on schedule and within agreed scope. Exhibit strong judgment in balancing scientific rigor with commercial and operational constraints. Build trust with senior stakeholders by demonstrating reliability, transparency, and rigorous follow through.

Nice to have

Experience building operational models and delivery processes for new functions.

Skills & tools

No specific tools are listed.

What you'll do

• Engage with the realities of multi year physical sciences programs that require deep technical coordination.
• Operate within the compensation range of base 190000 to 230000 as stated in the key facts section.
• Commit to the location requirement of Cambridge, MA USA for this role.
• Align with the requirement set that emphasizes ownership of customer health, cross functional coordination, and delivery discipline.
• Apply strategic judgment to navigate ambiguous problems while maintaining clarity for internal and external stakeholders.
• Use the outlined responsibilities to structure day to day work, ensuring that program architecture, milestone management, and information flow remain disciplined.
• Partner closely with commercial and science teams to expand engagement value in responsible and structured ways.
• Surface risks and decisions early, running effective forums that keep projects on track and stakeholders aligned.
• Build reusable templates and tools that allow Lila to execute future physical sciences programs more efficiently.
• Maintain rigorous communication standards, translating complex scientific constraints into clear requirements and tradeoff discussions.
• Support the creation of delivery processes that can scale while preserving quality and coherence across programs.
• Navigate difficult conversations such as delays, quality incidents, and scope changes with professionalism and clear documentation.
• Ensure handoffs are stable, documentation is complete, and value transitions cleanly into customer workflows.
• Operate with strategic independence, holding multiple threads of information and making sound decisions in the absence of obvious right answers.
• Commit to continuous improvement of delivery practices by constructing and refining operational models and best practices.
• Respect the multi year nature of engagements, exercising patience and long term thinking in program planning and execution.
• Reflect on outcomes from each program to inform future structures, tools, and routines that accelerate future onboarding and delivery.
• Demonstrate comfort in an environment where scientific detail is essential and precision in planning is non negotiable.
• Align with the requirement to coordinate cross functional teams that speak different technical languages and expectations.
• Balance commercial pressures with scientific rigor while protecting the integrity of the engagement and customer trust.
• Follow the source constraints closely, ensuring that no invented requirements or assumptions appear in the work.
• Adhere to the timeline expectations implied by multi year program management and ongoing coordination needs.
• Treat the role as central to the success of physical sciences programs, owning both the narrative and the execution for Lila at the customer interface.
• Use the provided key facts, requirements, and nice to have items as the definitive guide for this position.
• Operate within the defined compensation, location, and engagement parameters without seeking external adjustments not mentioned in source.
• Maintain alignment with the intent of the role as described in the about section and the detailed responsibilities.
• Ensure that all practical notes, such as location and compensation, are respected in planning and communications.
• Approach the role with the understanding that all requirements are hard bars and all nice to have items are preferences from source.
• Commit to following scope exactly as written, ensuring that the job page reflects the source material faithfully without additions or deviations.