Principal Scientist / Associate Director, Soft Materials Experimentation

Location: Cambridge, MA, USA

Salary: $156,000–$214,000 USD base salary per year, with bonus potential and early-stage equity.

Company

hirify.global is building AI-powered scientific systems and autonomous instruments to accelerate discovery across medicine, materials, and energy.

What you will do

• Lead and grow a team of scientists working across formulation, polymer processing, and physical characterization.
• Set the experimental strategy, measurement stack, campaign designs, scientific standards, and data-quality expectations for soft-materials programs.
• Build and validate high-throughput workflows for rheology, scattering, thermal and mechanical analysis, microfluidics, and application-specific testing.
• Define measurement strategies that support machine learning and inverse design, partnering with modeling and AI specialists to validate formulations.
• Work with automation and engineering teams to productionize workflows with reliable instrument control, structured data capture, and robotics.
• Manage equipment, vendor relationships, safety expectations, partner-funded delivery, and cross-domain characterization campaigns.

Requirements

• PhD in Materials Science, Polymer Science, Chemical Engineering, or Chemistry with 8+ years of post-degree R&D experience, or equivalent industrial experience.
• Experience leading scientific teams as a manager or technical lead with direct responsibility for others' work.
• Deep knowledge of phase behavior, self-assembly, rheology, interfacial phenomena, colloid and dispersion stability, transport, curing, and crosslinking.
• Hands-on experience formulating and characterizing multicomponent systems and translating structure–property relationships into performance.
• Experience delivering against external milestones with industrial partners or sponsored programs.
• Experience with design of experiments, high-throughput methods, structured data capture, ML collaboration, bench troubleshooting, and teams across multiple sites.

Nice to have

• Experience with adhesives, coatings, printed electronics, energy materials, consumer products, or personal care.
• Experience taking formulations through scale-up and manufacturability review.
• Experience with robotic formulation, automated characterization, or self-driving laboratories.
• Python proficiency for analysis, instrument control, or workflow orchestration.
• Familiarity with EHS and regulatory requirements for formulated products.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time U.S. employees receive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Benefits include employer-paid life and disability insurance, flexible time off, company-wide holidays, and paid parental leave.
• Educational assistance, commuter benefits including bike-share memberships for office-based employees, and a subsidized lunch program are available.
• The organization operates with startup speed while working on AI-enabled scientific discovery.