Director, Research Engineering

At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve. This is hard, urgent, selfless work—but it’s work worth doing. If you’re driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us.

About Lilly

At Lilly, everything we do starts with patients. We unite caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our global team of over 50,000 employees work with urgency and purpose to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve. We bring our best to this work because people depend on it. If you're driven by purpose and determined to make a meaningful difference for patients, we invite you to bring your skill and your commitment to Lilly.

About Technology@Lilly

At Lilly, technology is not a support function. It is how a global medicine company operates, innovates, and delivers. Lilly in Bengaluru builds the capabilities that make this possible, cloud platforms, AI systems, and automation at enterprise scale, all in service of a purpose that makes this technology work genuinely distinctive, from advancing drug discovery to enabling connected clinical trials to keeping a global medicine company running at the standard patients deserve.

Role - Director, Research Engineering

The Director, Research Engineering is a leadership role responsible for delivering technology solutions that accelerate drug discovery and development at Lilly Bengaluru. This position bridges pharmaceutical research and modern engineering platforms, advancing innovation through AI/ML, cloud-native architectures, and contemporary data engineering practices.

This leader will build and lead a high-performing engineering organization and partner closely with US-based research stakeholders. The role requires strong technical judgment, mature people leadership, and the ability to influence senior executives on decisions that shape pharmaceutical R&D outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

Platform & Delivery Leadership

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Own end-to-end delivery of research engineering platforms that enable AI-driven drug discovery, computational chemistry, bioinformatics, and molecular modelling.

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Architect and scale cloud-native data platforms (AWS/Azure) for genomics, compound libraries, bioassay results, and multi-omics datasets.

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Deliver AI/ML pipelines for target identification, molecule generation, and ADMET prediction.

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Oversee informatics systems (LIMS, ELN) and scientific data management capabilities to improve data integrity and usability.

Architecture, Innovation & Engineering Excellence

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Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies (e.g., generative AI for molecule design, protein structure prediction, multi-omics integration) with clear value and risk assessments.

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Set engineering standards and practices (CI/CD, infrastructure as code, observability, security-by-design) to improve reliability and speed.

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Establish technical governance to ensure architectural consistency, reuse, and maintainability across the engineering organisation.

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Drive speed-to-production improvements while maintaining quality, security, and compliance expectations.

People Leadership

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Lead, mentor, and develop multidisciplinary teams spanning bioinformatics, software engineering, cloud architecture, and IT.

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Build a culture of innovation, experimentation, and continuous learning while meeting pharma quality standards.

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Implement career and capability frameworks tailored to scientific software engineers and computational scientists.

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Upskill teams in modern scientific computing (e.g., LLMs for literature mining).

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Lead performance management, promotion and compensation recommendations, and succession planning.

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Continuously improve organisational design, span of control, and management capacity to sustain delivery.

Communication & Influence

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Translate complex architectures and AI capabilities into clear options and trade-offs for senior leaders.

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Advocate for technology investments that balance innovation, compliance, security, and risk.

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Develop executive-ready narratives, presentations, and strategic plans that align stakeholders and funding.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

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15+ years in technology delivery, including 7+ years in pharmaceutical/biotech/life sciences organisations.

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5+ years leading large engineering teams, with a track record of building and scaling high-performing organisations.

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Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Engineering, or a related technical field.

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Deep experience with AWS/Azure cloud architecture, DevOps, and application security.

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Expertise in lakehouse/data lake patterns, ETL/ELT pipelines, MLOps, and real-time/streaming data processing.

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Strong working knowledge of Python, R, and SQL, plus familiarity with chemical structure databases, compound libraries, and molecular descriptors.

At Lilly, caring is not only what we do for patients. It is how we work. We believe the people who dedicate themselves to making medicines better deserve an environment that makes their lives better too, one where they are supported, respected, and given the space to do their best work. This is not just a policy. It is who we are.

Lilly is dedicated to helping individuals with disabilities to actively engage in the workforce, ensuring equal opportunities when vying for positions. If you require accommodation to submit a resume for a position at Lilly, please complete the accommodation request form ( Workplace Accommodation | Lilly ) for further assistance. Please note this is for individuals to request an accommodation as part of the application process and any other correspondence will not receive a response.

Lilly does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status.

Lilly is dedicated to helping individuals with disabilities to actively engage in the workforce, ensuring equal opportunities when vying for positions. If you require accommodation to submit a resume for a position at Lilly, please complete the accommodation request form ( https://careers.lilly.com/us/en/workplace-accommodation ) for further assistance. Please note this is for individuals to request an accommodation as part of the application process and any other correspondence will not receive a response.

Lilly does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status.

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