Director​/Senior Director, Analytical Methods; MethodsInsight

Overview

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 the understanding and management of disease, and give back to our communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. We put people first and are looking for people who are determined to make life better for others.

Location:

San Diego, CA;
San Francisco, CA;
Louisville, CO;
Indianapolis, IN;
Boston, MA

Reports to:

AVP - Methods4

Insight, Data Foundry

The Director/Senior Director, Analytical Methods will serve as a domain expert and technical leader within Methods4

Insight, responsible for developing, deploying, and maintaining cutting-edge analytical approaches in their area of expertise — such as cheminformatics, computational structural biology, statistical modeling, or AI/ML. This role combines deep domain knowledge with scientific leadership, translating advanced methods into practical capabilities that accelerate molecule discovery for both human scientists and autonomous AI agents.

You will work with discovery project teams and supporting functions to understand scientific challenges, provide expert consultation, and develop custom solutions when existing methods fall short. You will evaluate emerging methods and make build-versus-buy-versus-adopt recommendations. You will collaborate with Methods4

Insight domain experts, Architecture4

Insight, Scale4

Insight, and Frontier AI.

We are looking for someone who is recognized as an expert in their analytical domain, has a strong publication record, has deployed methods that influenced real discovery decisions, and is passionate about advancing their field and enabling scientific impact.

• Serve as the subject matter expert in your analytical domain, stay current on innovative methods, and make informed recommendations about adoption, adaptation, or development of novel approaches.
• Develop and deploy cutting-edge analytical methods tailored to Lilly's discovery challenges, building workflows that integrate multiple approaches (e.g., physics-based and data-driven) to harness complementary strengths.
• Collaborate with discovery project teams to translate complex scientific questions into tractable analytical problems, driving analyses that inform compound prioritization, design recommendations, and mechanism of action hypotheses.
• Collaborate with Architecture4
  
  Insight to deploy analytical methods as accessible tools and agent-ready capabilities with well-defined APIs for autonomous AI decision-making.
• Identify strategic data gaps in your domain and partner with Scale4
  
  Insight to design targeted experiments that generate data in high-value areas.
• Establish best practices for method validation, including prospective testing against experimental outcomes, and demonstrate impact through metrics: decisions influenced, hypotheses generated, and timelines accelerated.
• Collaborate across all Data Foundry pillars and with Frontier AI to ensure analytical capabilities are fully integrated into the broader discovery ecosystem.
• Publish peer-reviewed research, present at scientific conferences, and build analytical literacy across the organization.
• Mentor junior computational scientists and contribute to a culture of scientific rigor, reproducibility, and continuous improvement.

• MS/Ph.D. in Cheminformatics, Computational Biology, Biophysics, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics, or a related quantitative field.
• 6+ years of experience developing and applying analytical methods in drug discovery or related life sciences fields.

• Deep expertise in at least one analytical domain with demonstrated impact on scientific outcomes.
• Strong programming skills in Python, R, or similar scientific computing languages.
• Publications in peer-reviewed journals demonstrating contributions to your analytical domain.
• Ability to explain complex analytical concepts clearly to non-computational scientists.
• Track record of deploying analytical…