Director/Senior Director, Analytical Methods (Methods4Insight)

Role Summary

The Director/Senior Director, Analytical Methods will serve as a domain expert and technical leader within Methods4Insight, responsible for developing, deploying, and maintaining analytical approaches in their area of expertise (e.g., cheminformatics, computational structural biology, statistical modeling, or AI/ML). This role combines deep domain knowledge with scientific leadership to translate advanced methods into practical capabilities that accelerate molecule discovery for both human scientists and autonomous AI agents. You will work alongside discovery project teams to understand scientific challenges, provide expert consultation, and develop custom solutions when existing methods fall short. Location: San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; Louisville, CO; Indianapolis, IN; Boston, MA.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the subject matter expert in your analytical domain, staying current on innovative methods and making 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.
• Work alongside discovery project teams to translate complex scientific questions into tractable analytical problems, driving analyses that directly inform compound prioritization, design recommendations, and mechanism of action hypotheses.
• Collaborate with Architecture4Insight 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 Scale4Insight 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 tracked 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.

Qualifications

• Required: MS/Ph.D. in Cheminformatics, Computational Biology, Biophysics, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics, or a related quantitative field.
• Required: 6+ years of experience developing and applying analytical methods in drug discovery or related life sciences fields.
• Preferred: Deep expertise in at least one analytical domain with demonstrated impact on scientific outcomes.
• Preferred: Strong programming skills in Python, R, or similar scientific computing languages.
• Preferred: Publications in peer-reviewed journals demonstrating contributions to your analytical domain.
• Preferred: Ability to explain complex analytical concepts clearly to non-computational scientists.
• Preferred: Track record of deploying analytical methods that influenced real scientific decisions or discoveries.
• Preferred: Breadth across multiple analytical approaches, with experience both developing novel methods and adopting external approaches.
• Preferred: Familiarity with software engineering practices and deploying research code in production environments.
• Preferred: Experience mentoring junior scientists or managing interns/postdocs.
• Preferred: Ability to communicate effectively across scientific, technical, and executive audiences.
• Preferred: Passion for mentoring and empowering others.

Additional Requirements

• Physical Demands/Travel: The physical demands of this job are consistent with an office environment. This position will require travel.