LUYA
Careers

Join the team building the future of fresh nutrition.

A century of industrial food solved hunger and quietly charged one price: distance. LUYA exists to close it — to make food that is still alive something an ordinary household eats on an ordinary Tuesday, and eventually something people can grow wherever they go.

That takes plant scientists, computer-vision researchers, people who can tell a story honestly, and people who will tell us when we are wrong. Some of them are employees. Some are advisors, interns, collaborators or contributors. All of the doors are on this page.

Open roles

Five people who would change what we can do.

We are small, so each of these is a real gap rather than a layer of an org chart. If you are unsure whether you fit, the open application at the bottom exists for exactly that.

Senior Plant Scientist

Full-time
Princeton, NJ · Hybrid

The most important hire we will make. You decide what a good growing recipe is, and prove it.

What you would do

  • Nutritional optimisation of microgreens — which conditions change composition, and by how much.
  • Light spectrum, nutrient solution and growth-model development across the crop library.
  • Designing the trials that train and validate the LUYA plant model.
  • Running our research collaborations — a formal agreement with the University of Connecticut is signed — and building the next ones.
  • Being specific in public about what a result does and does not show.

What we are looking for

  • PhD preferred in Plant Science, Horticulture, Plant Physiology, Controlled Environment Agriculture or a related field.
  • Hands-on experience running controlled-environment trials, not only reading about them.
  • Comfort with the idea that a negative result is a result.

Computer Vision / AI Scientist

Full-time
Hybrid

Turn what a camera sees inside the machine into decisions the machine can act on.

What you would do

  • Plant and variety identification from in-device imagery.
  • Disease and failure detection early enough to be actionable.
  • Growth-stage prediction and harvest-readiness judgement.
  • Nutrition prediction from observable growth signals.
  • The plant digital twin — a model of the crop the software can reason about.

What we are looking for

  • MS or PhD in computer vision, machine learning or a closely related field.
  • Python and PyTorch in production, not only in notebooks.
  • Experience with small, messy, real-world datasets rather than clean benchmarks.

Growth Marketing Manager

Full-time
United States · Remote or Hybrid

Own how people find LUYA, and how many of them stay.

What you would do

  • The Founder 100 campaign end to end — acquisition, selection funnel, and the story around it.
  • Paid acquisition across Meta and Google, from first test to a channel that pays for itself.
  • Creator partnerships and user-generated content, with disclosure done properly.
  • Email and lifecycle marketing.
  • Community — the part that compounds and cannot be bought.
  • SEO, working alongside a Journal that already publishes several times a week.

What we are looking for

  • You have taken a consumer product from early traction to a repeatable channel.
  • You read the numbers yourself rather than waiting for a dashboard.
  • You are comfortable marketing a product whose claims are gated by scientists.

Content Creator / Social Media Producer

Full-time
United States preferred

Shoot the real thing. Trays, kitchens, the lab, the people — including the parts that go wrong.

What you would do

  • Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts as a body of work, not a posting schedule.
  • Behind-the-scenes from the lab and the workshop.
  • Founder stories and customer stories, filmed with real people in real kitchens.
  • Building a library of original footage the whole company can draw on.

What we are looking for

  • You shoot and edit yourself, quickly, to a standard you are proud of.
  • A portfolio that shows range with real subjects, not only polished product renders.

Business Development Manager

Full-time
United States · Remote or Hybrid

Open the doors that consumer marketing cannot reach.

What you would do

  • Restaurants and professional kitchens.
  • Corporate wellness programmes.
  • Universities, research groups and campus dining.
  • Hospitals, clinics and care settings.
  • Space, defence and government programmes.
  • The Lighthouse programme — deployments in remote and extreme environments.

What we are looking for

  • You have sold into institutions and know how long procurement really takes.
  • You can hold a technical conversation without overselling what the product does.
Internships

Two doors, so you don’t have to guess which one.

We welcome graduate and undergraduate students. Interns here run real trials and ship real work — we are too small to have anyone fetching coffee.

Engineering & Science Interns

Internship
Princeton, NJ · Hybrid, and remote for some projects

One application for every technical internship we run.

What you would do

  • Plant science — running and recording bench trials.
  • Mechanical engineering — mechanism, thermal and enclosure work.
  • Electrical engineering — sensing, control and instrumentation.
  • Computer vision — dataset work, annotation pipelines and model evaluation.

We welcome graduate and undergraduate students. Tell us which area fits you and we will route it.

Marketing & Design Interns

Internship
United States · Remote or Hybrid

One application for marketing, content and design internships.

What you would do

  • Marketing — research, campaign support, analytics and editorial.
  • Graphic design — brand, packaging, editorial and social assets.

We welcome graduate and undergraduate students. Portfolios matter more than CVs here.

Scientific Advisory Council

The people who will tell us when we are wrong.

LUYA makes claims about nutrition, and claims about nutrition deserve scrutiny from people with no stake in the answer being flattering. The council exists to provide it: to read what we intend to publish before we publish it, and to say plainly when the evidence does not carry the sentence.

It is a review body, not an endorsement. Members are not asked to endorse a product, appear in advertising, or support a health claim, and we do not describe their review as validation of anything we sell.

We are forming the council now, and applications are rolling. These are the domains we most want represented.

  • Plant Biology
  • Human Nutrition
  • Controlled Environment Agriculture
  • Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
  • Food Science
  • Space & Extreme-Environment Agriculture

We are not listing names yet, because there are none to list. When there are, they will appear on their own page with their institution, the scope of their involvement and the terms above — and nowhere else before that.

How the relationship works

A written Advisor Agreement
Both sides sign one. Scope, term and expectations are on paper before anything begins.
Paid for the time we ask for
A fee for each session, covering the meeting and the reading before it: US$500 in a first term, US$750 on renewal, US$1,000 for the chair. Everyone is on the same ladder — there is no negotiated rate. Other work we request is paid at market rate, agreed in writing first. There is no salary and no retainer.
Travel on us
Sessions are held by video and attendance is never required in person. Where we ask you to travel, LUYA books and pays for flights and hotel in advance.
Equity, with a 12-month cliff
Nothing vests before twelve months. At twelve months the Board reviews your contribution, and the grant follows that review.
Typical grants of 0.01%–0.05%
Set by scope and contribution, and subject to board approval and our equity incentive plan.
Research and publication funding
Council members may propose microgreens research for LUYA to fund, and we cover publication costs for agreed papers. Funding never depends on the finding.

What we would ask of you

  • One session each quarter — three to five hours including the pre-read, by video.
  • Technical review — reading what we intend to publish before we publish it.
  • Introductions: researchers, institutions, and people worth hiring.
  • Support with media and scientific press when a topic is genuinely yours.
  • Help shaping research collaborations, and occasionally participating in them.
Entrepreneur in Residence

If you are between things and this is interesting.

An EIR arrangement is a way to work closely on a real problem without either side pretending to know yet whether it becomes a job. Some of them do — an EIR who finds the work compelling and proves indispensable is how an operating role usually starts here.

Domains where that would make sense right now:

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Consumer Electronics
  • Supply Chain & Manufacturing
  • Nutrition & Health
  • Marketing & Brand
Other ways in
Open application

Don’t see the perfect role?

Tell us how you would help build the future of fresh nutrition. Some of the best people we have spoken to arrived describing a job that was not on this page.

Tell us about you
One good link beats a CV. For research roles, a publication list is ideal.
Write it yourself. We would rather read something plain than something polished.
Nothing here is an offer, and an advisory enquiry is not an Advisor Agreement — those are signed separately, in writing.