Director​/Senior Director, Bone Biology and Osteoporosis Discovery

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.

Location:

Boston, MA or Indianapolis, IN

About Lilly At Lilly, we unite caring with discovery to make life better for people worldwide. As a global healthcare leader headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, we are committed to advancing innovation in areas of high unmet medical need. With a proven track record in obesity research and a growing focus on healthy aging, we seek an experienced discovery leader to help build a portfolio of transformative therapies that preserve skeletal health and arrest age-related functional decline.

This role offers the opportunity to shape strategy, drive impactful drug discovery and development programs, and contribute to Lilly's mission of scientific excellence and patient-centered care.

Position Summary The Director / Senior Director will serve as the scientific and strategic leader for osteoporosis and bone biology preclinical discovery, responsible for defining, implementing, and continuously evolving Lilly's preclinical discovery strategy in this area. This leader will drive the integration of human biology, translational science, and preclinical models to establish a differentiated and execution-focused discovery framework. The role includes advancing programs from target identification through preclinical development toward early clinical translation, ensuring decisions are guided by robust, decision-enabling data.

The successful candidate will play a central role in shaping the bone pipeline, building critical capabilities, and establishing best-in-class approaches to target prioritization and validation within the Mobility & Healthy Aging portfolio.

• Strategy Leadership - Define and implement the preclinical discovery strategy for osteoporosis, including target discovery, validation and prioritization frameworks, experimental approaches, and decision criteria.
• Leverage human genetics, multi-omics, and patient-derived data to prioritize targets and pathways with strong human evidence.
• Shape strategies that address skeletal health in the context of aging and metabolic disease, including the skeletal effects of weight loss and incretin-based therapies.
• Drive portfolio prioritization, articulating differentiation, risk, and alignment with clinical and regulatory expectations.
• Build and evolve preclinical and translational capabilities (internal and external) to support execution of the strategy.
• Identify, shape, and manage external opportunities, including business development, academic collaborations, and CRO partnerships.
• Ensure alignment of the bone strategy with broader Mobility & Healthy Aging and musculoskeletal portfolio objectives.

• Build and lead an innovative lab focused on novel approaches to identify and validate targets and pathways for osteoporosis and skeletal disease. Bring novel, high-potential targets into the pipeline for therapeutic approaches.
• Lead bone discovery programs, driving target identification, validation, and progression of therapeutic candidates.
• Design and implement end-to-end experimental strategies across in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo…