Sr. Principal AI Software Engineer

At Lilly, we unite caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. We are a global healthcare leader headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Our employees work to discover and bring life‑changing medicines to those who need them, improve understanding and management of disease, and give back to our communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. We put people first and invite you to join our mission.

We are seeking an exceptional Senior Principal Engineer to lead the development and deployment of transformative AI solutions across Eli Lilly’s global enterprise. In this role you will architect autonomous AI systems that enhance safety, quality, and operational efficiency across all business functions—from drug discovery and manufacturing to corporate operations in Legal, HR, and Finance. You will drive the implementation of cutting‑edge agent architectures and establish AI development standards for regulated environments, building and guiding high‑performing technical teams while shaping how artificial intelligence revolutionizes pharmaceutical innovation and patient care.

• Architect Production AI Systems: design and ship scalable autonomous agent platforms that solve real problems—own the full stack from LLM integration to production deployment.
• Build on Lilly Cortex: leverage Lilly’s enterprise AI platform to architect sophisticated agentic systems using Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent‑to‑Agent (A2A) communication for multi‑agent coordination, and dynamic UI frameworks that wrap intelligent experiences around agent workflows.
• Ship Fast with AI Tooling: use AI‑assisted development tools such as Git Hub Copilot and LLM‑driven workflows to accelerate output and set the standard for how modern engineering teams build with AI.
• Define the AI Platform Strategy: own the technical vision for Studio as the company’s AI business platform and make architectural decisions that scale from prototype to enterprise.
• Level Up the Team: mentor engineers in modern AI/ML practices, prompt engineering, and agentic patterns while building a high‑trust, high‑velocity culture where shipping matters.
• Establish Engineering Standards: create the playbook—CI/CD for AI systems, evaluation frameworks, observability for agent workflows, and compliance patterns for regulated environments—balancing innovation with reliability.
• Drive Product Impact: partner with product, operations, and business teams to identify high‑leverage AI opportunities and ship features that move metrics, not science projects.
• Stay on the Edge: evaluate new models, test emerging frameworks, and bring the latest research into production before it is mainstream.

• Bachelor, Master or PhD degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience.
• 2+ years architecting and deploying production AI systems.
• Proven success delivering AI solutions in regulated or enterprise‑wide environments.

• AI Development Proficiency: experience building production applications with AI‑powered development tools (Git Hub Copilot, Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, Grok).
• Agent Architecture: hands‑on experience designing and deploying autonomous agent systems, including orchestration patterns, tool selection, and failure handling.
• System Integration: expertise with Model Context Protocols, API integrations, and building extensible AI architectures.
• Modern AI Stack: proficiency in Python, Lang Chain/Lang Graph, vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma
  
  DB), embedding models, and advanced prompt engineering.

• Experience leading technical teams through AI transformation initiatives.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences—from engineering deep‑dives to executive strategy sessions.
• Track record of mentoring engineers and fostering innovation within teams.
• Strategic mindset balancing technical excellence with measurable business outcomes.

• End‑to‑end MLOps implementation: model versioning, monitoring, CI/CD for ML.
• Cloud AI platform expertise: AWS Sage Maker,…