Associate Director - Enterprise Data Platforms Operations

At Lilly, we unite caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. We are a global healthcare leader headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Our employees around the world work to discover and bring life-changing medicines to those who need them, improve the understanding and management of disease, and give back to our communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. We give our best effort to our work, and we put people first.

We’re looking for people who are determined to make life better for people around the world.

Are you passionate about transforming enterprise-scale data experiences through modern data platforms, autonomous operations, and AI-driven reliability engineering?

The Enterprise Data Platforms Operations organization is seeking an Associate Director to provide strategic leadership for data platform operations and modernization initiatives spanning both cloud and on‑premise environments. In this role, you will champion platform reliability, drive an automation‑first culture, and deliver scalable, enterprise‑critical capabilities that enable advanced analytics, AI, and digital innovation.

As a leader, you will manage a newly formed team of 12-14 engineers responsible for strategic enterprise data platforms, promoting engineering excellence, automation, accountability, and ongoing improvement.

• Lead the strategy, roadmap, and execution of enterprise data platform operations initiatives with an SRE-first, product-centric mindset focused on reliability, automation, and user value.

• Evolve the portfolio of platforms operations of cloud databases, data Integration services, BI/analytics platforms, integration frameworks, and on-premises systems such as Oracle, Exadata, MQ, and Informatica.

• Ensure alignment with enterprise data strategy, Digital Core priorities, cybersecurity requirements, and long-term architectural direction.

• Embed platform governance, lifecycle management, compliance, and observability into every aspect of the portfolio.

• Oversee 24/7 operations with an emphasis on platform resilience, capacity, disaster recovery, cost visibility, and performance engineering.

• Drive the adoption of AI Ops, predictive monitoring, anomaly detection, and automated root cause analysis to reduce operational toil and accelerate recovery.

• Implement SLO-driven operations, distributed tracing, platform telemetry, and real-time observability across data pipelines, integrations, and platform services.

• Champion end-to-end automation and self-healing orchestration to eliminate manual intervention and accelerate speed-to-value.

• Lead and grow a diverse, inclusive global team of engineering managers, SREs, platform engineers, and operations specialists.

• Set clear goals, build leadership capability, and establish a culture of continuous learning, ownership, and engineering excellence.

• Coach teams to build deep expertise in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, OCI), SRE frameworks, Dev Ops, Data Ops, AI Ops, and enterprise tooling.

• Scale and develop a strong leadership bench across India and global locations, ensuring long-term succession, career pathways, and talent retention.

• Serve as a strategic partner across platform engineering, analytics, AI/ML, architecture, cybersecurity, and business domains to ensure platforms meet evolving stakeholder needs.

• Translate business requirements into scalable platform capabilities, ensuring adoption, reliability, and measurable business outcomes.

• Lead cross-functional modernization initiatives and represent the platform operations organization in enterprise governance and architecture forums.

• Influence enterprise-wide decisions on technology standards, platform patterns, and operating models.

• Evaluate emerging technologies in cloud data platforms, observability tooling, autonomous operations, and agentic AI, recommending future-state architectures.

• Drive the selection, onboarding, and integration of tools that strengthen reliability, automation,…