Associate Vice President, DDCS & PRD Computer Simulation & Modeling Sciences Leader

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. 

Organization Overview:

At Eli Lilly and Company, we unite caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. Lilly has led global healthcare for more than 140 years, discovering and developing medicines in a complex, fast-changing industry where innovation is the core advantage. Our employees around the world work as one team to bring breakthrough medicines to the patients who need them. We're looking for a visionary senior technical leader to help us continue that work.

Delivery, Device, and Connected Solutions (DDCS) is a core scientific and engineering organization within Eli Lilly's Product Research & Development (PRD) organization. DDCS advances innovative drug delivery technologies and patient-centric solutions spanning injection systems, connected devices, novel delivery routes, advanced formulations, and emerging therapeutic modalities.

As Lilly's portfolio continues to expand in complexity and scale, computational modeling, digital engineering, scientific machine learning, and AI-enabled decision support are becoming foundational capabilities for development. The ability to predict performance, understand mechanisms, optimize designs, quantify uncertainty, and accelerate learning across product and process development is increasingly critical to delivering medicines faster and with greater confidence.

To accelerate this transformation, Lilly is establishing the Pan-PRD Modeling Sciences Hub, a strategic capability organization responsible for embedding Modeling Sciences into the way development is performed across DDCS, BRD, and SMDD. The Hub serves as the enterprise focal point for workflow modernization, capability development, reusable modeling platforms, scientific AI integration, talent development, and model-informed decision making.

Position Overview:

We're seeking an exceptional technical and organizational leader to define and execute Lilly's long-term vision for Modeling Sciences across Product Research & Development. This leader will shape how computational, mechanistic, statistical, and AI-enabled methods are deployed across the development lifecycle, and will lead the transformation toward a future where quantitative models are routinely embedded in development workflows, accelerating critical decisions, reducing uncertainty, and improving patient outcomes. The leader will own the Modeling Sciences vision, strategy, and enterprise operating model, while preserving a distributed execution model that keeps scientific accountability within the business lines.

This role represents a unique opportunity to shape the future of scientific development at Lilly, from molecule design to drug delivery. The successful candidate will build the foundation for a model-informed, AI-enabled development ecosystem that transforms how products and processes are designed, optimized, and advanced across PRD. Through leadership of the Pan-PRD Modeling Sciences Hub, this individual will help define the next generation of development workflows, accelerate innovation, and create durable competitive advantage for Lilly and the patients we serve.

 

Key Responsibilities:

1. Own the Pan-PRD Modeling Sciences Vision and Strategy

• Serve as the enterprise leader for Modeling Sciences across PRD. Define and execute a long-term vision that establishes modeling, simulation, digital engineering, and AI-enabled scientific decision-making as foundational capabilities across development.

• Align capability investments, talent strategies, governance mechanisms, and technology roadmaps to accelerate portfolio delivery and maximize enterprise value.

• Lead the organizational and operating-model change needed to embed quantitative sciences into how PRD makes decisions, not just how it executes projects, positioning modeling and AI as a core strategic differentiator for Lilly's portfolio rather than a support function.

2. Drive new modeling capabilities and AI-enabled Scientific Transformation

• Champion the integration of scientific machine learning, generative AI, physics-informed AI, digital twins, and knowledge-enabled modeling workflows across PRD.

• Establish frameworks that combine computational science, experimental data, domain expertise, and AI technologies to create a scalable, modern development ecosystem capable of supporting Lilly's future portfolio needs.

3. Lead Enterprise Workflow Modernization

• Govern the recurring PRD Development Workflow review cycle, ensuring mature in-silico approaches are jointly identified, agreed, and embedded at the activities and decision points where they create the most portfolio value.

• Lead the cross-functional leadership body that sets strategic direction, resolves cross-line priorities, allocates investment across capability, capacity, and platform needs, and maintains alignment with PRD Leadership.

4. Build and Sustain Platform-Level Capability

• Direct the modeling Hub's technology roadmap across mechanistic, statistical, data-driven, and scientific ML/AI modeling disciplines.

• Establish the Workflow Library, Modeling Sciences Capability Map, and Reusable Platform Portfolio as durable enterprise assets designed to create lasting advantage, not one-off deliverables.

5. Sponsor and Accelerate Talent Across the Enterprise

• Actively identify, sponsor, and accelerate the development of modeling talent across PRD, including STA and rotational assignments that build durable, distributed capability within the business lines rather than dependency on the Hub.

• Build a distributed, self-sustaining modeling talent ecosystem across PRD business lines that grows capability independent of any single team.

6. Govern Strategic Interfaces & cross functional influence beyond PRD

• Lead through influence across PRD, Manufacturing, Discovery, Tech@Lilly, and Regulatory, aligning diverse stakeholders around a common vision and operating model.

• Serve as a key point of contact for Modeling Sciences technology discussions with Manufacturing, Discovery, and Regulatory, including model transfer, model-informed regulatory dossiers, and technical oversight of externally performed modeling work.

7. Deliver Sustained, Portfolio-Level Impact

• Integrate Multiphysics/scale/fidelity modeling capabilities to inform and support technical decision making, provide scientific solutions, and influence medicine development strategies throughout drug discovery, development, and commercialization lifecycle. 

• Demonstrate sustained technical impact on the Lilly portfolio and on Modeling Sciences capabilities; lead efforts to solve substantial research, development, or commercialization challenges by delivering solutions that create long-term enterprise value.

• Translate modeling and AI capability into measurable portfolio, productivity, quality, and business outcomes, reporting progress to senior enterprise leadership.

8. Leverage External Networks and Represent Lilly Externally

• Build and leverage a diverse cross-functional, academic, industry, and regulatory network to enhance innovation and breakthrough thinking in Modeling Sciences.

• Shape and influence the external Modeling Sciences agenda through regulatory engagement, industry consortia, and academic partnerships, positioning Lilly as a thought leader in in-silico-enabled drug delivery and development.
  

Basic Qualifications:

• PhD in computational physics, biophysics, biomechanics, chemistry, engineering, or a related quantitative discipline, and 15+ years of relevant experience, including significant experience leading multidisciplinary/physics/scale computational or modeling organizations at an enterprise scale (or equivalent depth of impact).

• Demonstrated success leading large-scale scientific, computational, digital engineering, or modeling transformations across complex global R&D organizations, including development and execution of enterprise strategies that resulted in measurable portfolio, productivity, quality, or business outcomes.

• Demonstrated ability to build, sponsor, and accelerate technical talent and capability across an enterprise, including designing rotational, STA, or equivalent capability-transfer mechanisms.

• Established external reputation and network, regulatory, industry, or academic, sufficient to shape external practice and bring outside perspective into Lilly's R&D strategy.
  

Additional Preferences:

• Sustained record of enterprise-level technical leadership, consistently delivering significant, portfolio-level business results through modeling, simulation, and computational capabilities.

• Broad literacy across the Modeling Sciences landscape, including mechanistic/first-principles modeling, statistical and empirical modeling, molecular dynamics, computational fluid dynamics, finite element analysis, scientific ML/physics-ML hybrid methods, uncertainty quantification, and digital twins, sufficient to make credible investment, prioritization, and technology-roadmap decisions without requiring hands-on execution.

• Experience chairing or serving on cross-functional governance or leadership bodies, with comfort making resource and portfolio prioritization decisions across competing business-line needs.

• Track record of external thought leadership: publications, conference keynotes, or influence on industry practice and regulatory opinion.

• Excellent executive communication skills, able to translate technical strategy into business and portfolio impact for senior R&D and enterprise leadership.

• Recognized enterprise thought leader capable of shaping organizational strategy, influencing executive decision-making, and driving transformational change across large scientific organizations.

• Demonstrated experience establishing new organizational capabilities, operating models, or scientific platforms that delivered enduring strategic advantage.

• Strong understanding of how quantitative sciences, AI, data, and digital technologies can be integrated into pharmaceutical development workflows to improve productivity, quality, and decision velocity.
  

Other Information:

• Travel: 10–20%

• Location: Indianapolis, IN; Lilly Technology Center – North (LTC-N)

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 is proud to be an EEO Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender identity, sex, gender expression, sexual orientation, genetic information, ancestry, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.

Our employee resource groups (ERGs) offer strong support networks for their members and are open to all employees. Our current groups include: Africa, Middle East, Central Asia (AMECA), Black Employees at Lilly (BE@Lilly), Chinese Culture Network (CCN), EnAble, Evolve, Lilly Indian Network (LIN), Organization of Latinx at Lilly (OLA), Pride (LGBTQ+ Allies), Veterans Leadership Network (VLN) and Women’s Initiative for Leading at Lilly (WILL).

Actual compensation will depend on a candidate’s education, experience, skills, and geographic location.  The anticipated wage for this position is

$219,000 - $352,000

Full-time equivalent employees also will be eligible for a company bonus (depending, in part, on company and individual performance). In addition, Lilly offers a comprehensive benefit program to eligible employees, including eligibility to participate in a company-sponsored 401(k); pension; vacation benefits; eligibility for medical, dental, vision and prescription drug benefits; flexible benefits (e.g., healthcare and/or dependent day care flexible spending accounts); life insurance and death benefits; certain time off and leave of absence benefits; and well-being benefits (e.g., employee assistance program, fitness benefits, and employee clubs and activities).Lilly reserves the right to amend, modify, or terminate its compensation and benefit programs in its sole discretion and Lilly’s compensation practices and guidelines will apply regarding the details of any promotion or transfer of Lilly employees.

#WeAreLilly