Advisor, 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 Indianapolis-based senior automation engineer to join the Automation Engineering team within Lilly's RNA Therapeutics group.

In this role, the successful candidate will do the core technical work of building, deploying, and supporting laboratory automation that advances pipeline-facing science, with a particular focus on in vitro pharmacology and chemistry workflows. Equally important is the partnership side of the role: working closely with scientific users to understand their needs, supporting the systems they depend on, and enabling teams to get the most out of automation.

This is a builder's role for someone who wants to be close to the bench and the instruments, and who takes satisfaction in seeing their systems genuinely adopted.

The ideal candidate is a skilled automation engineer who independently identifies the key technical problems in a workflow and develops practical solutions to solve them. They take pride in delivering systems that are intuitive and dependable for users with varying levels of automation experience, so that automation measurably improves the efficiency of their work. They bring sound engineering judgment, a methodical approach to qualification and reproducibility, a teamwork-minded approach to user support, and an interest in how emerging tools, including LLM-based coding assistants, can speed up method development and deployment.

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* Key Responsibilities:

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* + Build, program, deploy, and maintain laboratory automation systems supporting in vitro pharmacology, chemistry, and related pipeline workflows

+ Develop and validate automated methods, translating scientific protocols into robust, reproducible automated processes

+ Partner directly with scientific users to gather requirements, understand their workflows, weigh practical tradeoffs, and deliver automation solutions that meet their needs

+ Deploy and support automation systems tailored to specific pipeline processes and throughput needs

+ Provide ongoing support for deployed systems, responding to user needs and keeping automation running reliably day to day

+ Develop clear documentation, quick-reference guides, and ongoing support resources that help teams operate automated workflows independently

+ Plan and deliver hands-on training to local end users on new instrumentation, automated methods, and protocols, tailoring instruction to varying levels of automation experience and ensuring users can operate systems confidently and independently

+ Resolve hardware, software, and integration issues to keep systems running reliably

+ Strengthen data reproducibility across automated processes through sound standards, controls, and qualification practices

+ Integrate automation with scheduling and lab orchestration software and with ELN/LIMS platforms such as Benchling

+ Apply LLM-based coding tools and agentic assistants to accelerate method development, scripting, and systems integration

+ Contribute to the generation of large-scale, structured datasets suitable for AI/ML applications

+ Build effective working relationships across scientific and engineering teams to ensure automation solutions fit real-world use

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* Basic Qualifications:

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* Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, biological sciences, or related field with 5+ years of hands-on laboratory automation experience.

** Additional Skills/Preferences:*
* + Hands-on expertise with the Hamilton automation ecosystem and a track record of building and deploying integrated automation across other platforms (e.g. acoustic dispensers (e.g., Echo), oligonucleotide synthesizers, robotic arms, Tecan instruments)

+ Experience automating in vitro pharmacology and chemistry workflows.

+ Strong method development and qualification skills, with a focus on reproducibility.

+ Demonstrated ability to work directly with scientific users to gather requirements…