Scientific Lead - Translational Sciences

Scientific Lead, Translational Sciences

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.

The Translational Sciences group is a central node in the Lilly Oncology drug discovery organization, with the mission to inform clinical biomarker strategy, clinical development strategy, regulatory filings, life cycle management and to reverse-translate clinical insights to next-generation drug development. Preclinical efforts aim to solidify understanding of therapeutic mechanism, indication and patient selection, dose and schedule, differentiation, resistance mechanisms, rational combination strategies, and adverse event mitigation.

This is a lab-based position for an experienced molecular/cell biologist who enjoys working at the bench and applying state-of-the-art technology platforms for the development of small and large molecule therapeutics including ADCs and TCEs. As a Scientific Lead, you will operate with significant scientific independence, serving as a domain expert and key contributor to cross-functional program teams. You interpret experimental results in the context of the broader therapeutic area and target literature, and actively engages with computational, biomarker, clinical, pharmacology, legal, regulatory teams and other closely collaborating functions.

Excellent communication skills and a solutions-oriented approach are essential in this dynamic, fast-paced environment.

Roles and responsibilities include:

• Develop, optimize, and validate molecular and mammalian cellular assays to address mechanistic and functional questions in preclinical studies.
• Design and execute experiments to evaluate compound effects, identify rational combination partners, and investigate drug resistance mechanisms.
• Translate preclinical findings into actionable biomarker hypotheses and combination strategies including suitable patient segments to advance programs into and through clinical development.
• Represent Translational Sciences in project team meetings; present data, interpret results in a therapeutic context, and drive scientific discussion.
• Excellent people and communication skills, with a positive, "can-do" attitude in a dynamic, fast-paced team focused on rigorous and cutting-edge science to deliver innovative cancer drugs and provide forward-thinking approaches to advance the Oncology portfolio.
• Prepare high-quality internal reports and contribute to external-facing documents including regulatory submissions and scientific publications.
• Proactively evaluate emerging technologies and service providers to ensure work is conducted with scientific rigor and operational efficiency.
• Continuously advance expertise in the relevant molecular pathways and therapeutic area, maintaining awareness of developments from target identification through clinical trials.
• Mentor junior scientists and contribute to the scientific culture of the Translational Sciences team.

Required qualifications include:

• Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, Cancer Biology, Biochemistry, or a closely related discipline with 2+ years of postdoctoral, research, or industry experience.
• Proven track record in developing, executing, and troubleshooting molecular and cellular assays; experience engineering cell models to modulate gene expression and interrogate cellular signal transduction pathways; experience with primary cell or immune co-culture systems is a plus.
• Proficiency with core molecular biology techniques: vector engineering, cloning and mutagenesis, qRT-PCR, ELISA, MSD, Western blotting, next-generation sequencing platforms, and flow cytometry (FACS).
• Strong…