Director - Automation Engineering

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. We are seeking an accomplished automation leader to head the Automation Engineering team within Lilly's RNA Therapeutics group. In this role, the successful candidate will lead a team of highly qualified automation experts and shepherd the RNA automation strategy end to end, from vision through design, build, and deployment.

The team designs and delivers both walk-up and fully integrated automation systems, and supports pipeline-facing processes across chemistry, biology, genomics, in vivo pharmacology, and in vitro pharmacology for users across RNA Therapeutics at multiple sites. This is an opportunity to build highly integrated automation platforms that strengthen data reproducibility and enable the creation of massively scaled datasets to feed AI/ML modeling and pre-clinical drug development efforts across the organization.

The ideal candidate is a seasoned automation engineer and people leader who pairs deep technical command with genuine emotional intelligence. Above all, they are an expert who scientists want to work with: they build trust quickly, drive adoption by meeting users where they are, and navigate complex partner relationships with ease. They work directly with scientists to understand experimental workflows, weigh scientific tradeoffs and priorities, and validate that automated processes faithfully serve scientific intent.

They bring a strong technical foundation across the modern automation stack, a track record of delivering reliable, pipeline-facing systems that scientific teams depend on, and a forward-looking view on how emerging tools, including LLM-based coding and agentic assistants, can accelerate automation development. They will build upon a strong foundation of excellence in automation, and deliver a harmonized strategy that enables the reproducible generation of high-quality data at scale.

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of automation experts, setting technical direction and developing talent across the group
• Partner with scientific users across RNA Therapeutics, building trust and driving adoption by delivering automation solutions that teams genuinely want to work with
• Work directly with scientists to understand their workflows, weigh scientific tradeoffs and priorities, and validate that automated processes meet scientific intent
• Develop and implement the RNA automation strategy, aligning platform investments with the scientific priorities of RNA Therapeutics
• Design and deliver automation systems spanning walk-up instruments and fully integrated end-to-end workflows
• Lead the deployment of custom work cells tailored to specific pipeline processes (e.g. NGS enablement) and throughput needs
• Deliver pipeline-facing automation across chemistry, biology, genomics, in vivo pharmacology, and in vitro pharmacology
• Strengthen data reproducibility across automated processes, establishing the standards, controls, and validation practices that make results consistent and reliable
• Adopt and scale LLM-based tools to accelerate automation enablement and programming, reducing the time from concept to deployed method and…