Senior Director, Data Operations Lead

Purpose

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— 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.

This job description is intended to provide a general overview of the job requirements at the time it was prepared. The job requirements of any position may change over time and may include additional responsibilities not specifically described in the job description. Consult with your supervision regarding your actual job responsibilities and any related duties that may be required for the position.

• RWD Operational Excellence & Data Readiness
• Lead the technical and data integrity evaluation of raw RWD prior to acceptance and licensing, ensuring fitness‑for‑use, completeness, standardization, structure, and alignment with enterprise needs ensuring all documentation is sufficient and centralized.
• Collaborate closely with RWD architect(s) and engineer(s) to translate scientific needs and intent into enterprise RWD infrastructure strategy and specifications resolving pipeline bottlenecks and ensuring documentation meets operational standards (SAPs, data dictionaries, audit trails).
• Accelerate evidence generation by standardizing and transforming raw data into reusable, analysis‑ready assets across different business units.
• Develop, execute, document quality‑control frameworks that qualify data completeness and ensure consistent, reliable RWD operations at scale.
• Lead with forward‑thinking mindset to incorporate strategic innovation (AI) into RWD ecosystem operations.
• Standardization of Coding Systems & Reusable RWD Assets
• Own end‑to‑end code list standardization, maintenance, stewardship, and hosting (e.g. ontology specifications, procedure codes, and medication codes incl. ICD‑10‑CM, ICD‑9, SNOMED–CT NDC, CPT/HCPC, LOINC, RxNorm).
• Lead development and maintenance of reusable phenotyping algorithms, code libraries, and standardized data pipelines and modular code to accelerate study startup.
• Establish governance and documentation standards for RWD asset reuse across functions.
• Governance & Cross‑Functional Operations Management
• Lead operational governance for the use of RWD, including access pathways, approval flows, stewardship processes, and compliance with enterprise standards.
• Partner with different stakeholders to ensure operational readiness of datasets, tools, and processes.
• Support organizational change by clarifying new operational roles, interfaces, and future‑state workflows.
• RWD Portfolio & Workflow Visibility Tools
• Build tools and dashboards enabling stakeholders to gain rapid visibility into RWD sources – quality and density structures, limitations, and operational metadata.
• Collaborate with RWD Strategy Lead to ensure visibility into current RWD assets and pairing with RWD/RWE studies and queries to inform prioritization and resource planning for data acquisition.
• Operate with a research mindset to support building analytical, flexible TA‑specific cohorts to support fast and consistent research
• Training, Documentation, & Capability Building
• Develop and deliver RWD‑source‑specific trainings to ensure scientific, technical, and operational teams understand the structure, quality, and limitations of each asset.
• Maintain and evolve documentation across pipelines, datasets, reusable components, and operational standards.

• Masters degree (MS, MPH, PharmD, PhD) in a quantitative, data, or health‑related field.
• Minimum of 3 years of RWD hands‑on experience with healthcare data structures (claims, EHR, and multi‑modal RWD, including linked clinical‑genomic/omics datasets).
• Minimum of 3 years experience of RWD…