Associate Director — PR&D Delivery & Operations

Eli Lilly · Bengaluru

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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. 

At Lilly, the data and digital capability that underpins every regulatory submission, batch investigation, and process decision across CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls) is being rebuilt rather than maintained. Time-to-insight for scientists and process engineers, audit- and inspection-readiness, and the cost of running PR&D's platforms all depend on these capabilities. This role is the mechanism by which the portfolio moves from sustaining the current estate to reshaping it: from request-taking to business partnership, from manual data and process work to AI- and agent-supported execution, and from vendor dependence to retained Lilly capability.

The Associate Director, PR&D Delivery & Operations leads broader delivery teams across CMC data platform modernization (structured and unstructured data, platform operations), scientific workflow automation (LIMS, MES, ELN), data governance and business alignment, and AI & Analytics (AI-use-case delivery) — accountable for delivery, technical direction, team capability and measurable business outcomes across all three. The role sits where CMC scientific and data process meets engineering: credible enough to lead a design review and challenge an architecture, fluent enough in regulated CMC data work to shape how a scientific or process team actually works. Split roughly 60% delivery and technical leadership and 40% strategy, business partnership and vendor leadership, it owns the demand relationship with PR&D business owners, directs the partner teams delivering a material share of the work, and supports the portfolio's AI and agentic capability agenda as one part of a broader delivery mandate.

Key Responsibilities

• Portfolio Delivery Ownership — own delivery across the portfolio — scope, schedule, quality, dependencies, release readiness and production health — for CMC data and semantic infrastructure (knowledge graph, ontology, document and structured-data ingestion), platform modernization and operations, and AI-use-case delivery, directing the broader teams accountable for each track. Run delivery on real signals: flow, predictability, defect escape and adoption by scientific and process teams, not status reporting.

• Technical Direction & Engineering Standards — set and defend the technical direction of the portfolio, contributing to how CMC data platforms support the goals of the wider PR&D business area; review architecture and design, challenge weak decisions, and own standards for APIs, data contracts, ontology and knowledge-graph modeling (RDF/OWL/SPARQL, property graphs), and tool-calling interfaces (MCP) across CMC data platforms. Raise the engineering bar on test automation, CI/CD, observability and the deliberate reduction of technical debt, staying close enough to the work to judge trade-offs credibly.

• AI & Agentic Delivery Support — support delivery of AI and agentic use cases already on the portfolio roadmap — document and schema intelligence, retrieval over CMC content, and knowledge-graph-powered Q&A or summarization agents — ensuring these initiatives get the same delivery rigor, resourcing and release discipline as any other workstream. Help the team bring new use cases forward for evaluation, and support them through validation and into production with appropriate guardrails and human-in-the-loop review. Build AI-assisted engineering into the team's everyday practice, in step with the broader AI strategy set elsewhere in the portfolio.

• Business Partnership & Stakeholder Management — act as the technology partner for PR&D business owners and domain product managers across the portfolio's data, platform and AI-use-case tracks — the person they call first, and the person who tells them when an idea will not work. Capture and challenge incoming demand, agree priorities against capacity, and keep one honest view of the roadmap and what has been traded away. Translate CMC and scientific need into technical options and constraint, risk and cost into language a business owner can act on; set a rhythm of business reviews and early warning so there are no surprises at release; and build the case for modernization investment, with the benefit measurement that follows it.

• Vendor & Partner Delivery Management — get the work done through partner teams: define scope, outcomes and acceptance criteria, and hold suppliers to the same engineering, quality and GxP standards as internal teams. Shape the sourcing mix for the portfolio, plan partner ramp-up and ramp-down against the roadmap, manage supplier performance on predictability, quality and knowledge retention, and work with sourcing, legal and finance on statements of work, capacity models and change requests. Integrate partner engineers into one team, one backlog and one set of standards, and protect institutional knowledge through documentation, code ownership and cross-training.

• Quality, Risk & GxP Compliance — deliver in a GxP-regulated environment — computer system validation, 21 CFR Part 11, data integrity, inspection and audit readiness. Design for security and data privacy from the start, meet architecture and security review obligations early rather than at release, and own incident response and service levels for the products the teams run.

• People Leadership & Capability Building — manage, coach and grow broader delivery teams spanning multiple sub-teams and disciplines: clear expectations, specific feedback, honest check-ins and a development plan each person recognises as their own. Hire for the capability the portfolio needs next — engineering depth across data, knowledge-graph and AI-use-case delivery, product thinking, CMC domain fluency — address underperformance without delay, build bench strength and succession, and remove single points of failure. Hold high standards and psychological safety at the same time across a distributed team.

• Decision-Making Authority — make design, tooling, sequencing and sourcing decisions within the guidelines set by architecture, engineering and validation standards; challenge product, engineering or vendor approaches where delivery or compliance risk exists; forecast resource needs across the portfolio and manage the allocated budget against plan; contribute to PR&D's business-area plans by translating the modernization roadmap into resourced, executable delivery cycles; and escalate policy-level or cross-platform decisions with a recommendation rather than a question.

Technical & Capability Areas

CMC Data Systems (LIMS, MES, ELN) · Data Engineering & Data Platforms · Knowledge Graph & Ontology Engineering (OWL/RDF/SPARQL, Neo4j/property graphs) · Semantic Layer & Retrieval (Vector Databases, Hybrid/Graph-RAG) · AI/ML & Agentic Systems (LLMs, Multi-Agent Orchestration, Model Context Protocol) · Modern Software Development Practices (SDLC, CI/CD, Test Automation) · Cloud Platforms (Azure/AWS) · API & Integration Architecture · Clinical/Scientific Data Standards & Governance · Agile & Product Operating Model · Security & Compliance (GxP, CSV, 21 CFR Part 11) · Vendor & Delivery Governance · Business Stakeholder Management · People Leadership & Coaching

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering or a related field (Master's preferred).

• 10+ years in technology delivery or technical leadership, including 4+ years of direct people management across broader or multi-team delivery organizations.

• 4+ years supporting CMC, pharma R&D, or manufacturing data and process technology — LIMS/MES/DMS/ELN systems, batch records, process or regulatory submission data.

• Demonstrated ownership of delivery for a portfolio or platform across multiple concurrent programmes, including work delivered through vendors.

• Broad technology awareness and working strength across cloud platforms, APIs and enterprise integration patterns, data engineering, AI/ML, and agentic systems — enough to review a design, engage credibly with technical teams across all these areas, ask the right questions, and spot delivery or quality risk, without requiring hands-on ownership of any single one.

• Working familiarity with AI, machine learning or agentic solutions and how they move from proof of concept into governed production use.

• Experience operating in regulated (GxP) environments, including computer system validation and inspection-readiness practices.

• Demonstrated success owning a senior business relationship — shaping demand, negotiating priorities and capacity, and holding credibility through difficult delivery news.

• Demonstrated success governing multi-vendor or managed-service delivery, with clear separation of Lilly-owned and vendor-executed responsibility, and command of the commercial mechanics.

• Strong communication skills, translating technical trade-offs into business, scientific and regulatory language for senior stakeholders.

• Working knowledge of Agile-at-scale and product operating model practices (backlog governance, value-stream mapping) applied to a regulated portfolio.

• Track record of hiring, coaching, performance management and retention across broader, distributed delivery teams.

Additional Qualifications / Competencies

• Experience with knowledge graph or ontology engineering platforms (Neo4j, GraphDB, Protégé, or comparable), or semantic layer/retrieval tooling; platform training or certification.

• Exposure to CMC, manufacturing, or process data domains — batch records, equipment/material master data, or regulatory submission content.

• Strategic and analytical thinking — preparing decisions ahead of delivery rather than reacting to them.

• Strong vendor governance and negotiation skills; ownership mindset managing multiple priorities, stakeholders and concurrent programmes.

• Influence with internal and external customers and management — with business stakeholders who do not report to them and partner teams they do not employ; comfort driving clarity in ambiguity.

• Learning agility and continuous-improvement leadership — challenging the status quo and growing technical capability around them.

• Experience of shared ownership models between India-based and global organisations.

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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