Scientific Director - AI/ML Antibody Discovery

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.

Lilly’s Biotechnology Discovery Research (BioTDR) organization has a track record for delivering novel biotherapeutic medicines advanced into clinical research in key areas of unmet medical needs, across a variety of therapeutic areas. Integrating biology with innovative scientific capabilities in protein discovery, engineering and computational sciences, we are committed to delivering next wave of biomedicines.

We are seeking an accomplished scientific leader to drive the development of next-generation computational platforms for therapeutic antibody discovery. This role will lead the design and implementation of NGS-centric bioinformatics pipelines and machine learning models to accelerate in silico and de novo antibody discovery, directly impacting our large molecule drug discovery pipeline.

The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in antibody repertoire sequencing, structural modeling, and ML/AI driven antibody engineering, combined with strong leadership and cross-functional collaboration experience.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish integrated NGS pipeline and databases for efficient large-scale antibody repertoire analysis.
• Develop and apply bioinformatics and machine learning models to enable in silico and de novo antibody discovery, leveraging insight from natural B cell affinity maturation.
• Integrate structure-based prediction methods and antibody LLM to identify and optimize novel antibodies against challenging targets.
• Design scalable computational infrastructure to enable large-scale model training, data integration, and production workflows.
• Partner with wet-lab discovery, protein engineering, information technologist and therapeutic area teams to translate computational insights into validated antibody leads.
• Lead and mentor a high-performing team of computational scientists and bioinformaticians.
• Drive cross-functional collaborations and represent the organization in external partnerships, scientific presentations, and publications.
  
  
  

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Bioinformatics, Immunology, Computational Biology or related field.
• 4 years of experience (academic or industry) in computational antibody discovery, biologics R&D, or related field.
  
  
  

Preferred

• Proven expertise in NGS-based antibody repertoire sequencing and analysis.
• Proficiency in Python, deep learning frameworks, and bioinformatics pipeline development.
• Experience designing and managing large-scale computational infrastructure (on-premises and cloud-based).
• Demonstrated leadership experience managing scientific teams and cross-functional projects.
• Strong communication skills with a proven track record of scientific publications and external presentations.
  
  
  

Lilly is dedicated to helping individuals with disabilities to actively engage in the workforce, ensuring equal opportunities when vying for positions. If you require accommodation to submit a resume for a position at Lilly, please complete the accommodation request form (https://careers.lilly.com/us/en/workplace-accommodation) for further assistance. Please note this is for individuals to request an accommodation as part of the application process and any other correspondence will not receive a response.

Lilly is proud to be an EEO Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender identity, sex, gender expression, sexual orientation, genetic information, ancestry, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.

Our employee resource groups (ERGs) offer strong support networks for their members and are open to all employees. Our current groups include: Africa, Middle East, Central Asia Network, Black Employees at Lilly, Chinese Culture Network, Japanese International Leadership Network (JILN), Lilly India Network, Organization of Latinx at Lilly (OLA), PRIDE (LGBTQ Allies), Veterans Leadership Network (VLN), Women’s Initiative for Leading at Lilly (WILL), enAble (for people with disabilities). Learn more about all of our groups.

Actual compensation will depend on a candidate’s education, experience, skills, and geographic location. The anticipated wage for this position is

$184,500 - $270,600

Full-time equivalent employees also will be eligible for a company bonus (depending, in part, on company and individual performance). In addition, Lilly offers a comprehensive benefit program to eligible employees, including eligibility to participate in a company-sponsored 401(k); pension; vacation benefits; eligibility for medical, dental, vision and prescription drug benefits; flexible benefits (e.g., healthcare and/or dependent day care flexible spending accounts); life insurance and death benefits; certain time off and leave of absence benefits; and well-being benefits (e.g., employee assistance program, fitness benefits, and employee clubs and activities).Lilly reserves the right to amend, modify, or terminate its compensation and benefit programs in its sole discretion and Lilly’s compensation practices and guidelines will apply regarding the details of any promotion or transfer of Lilly employees.

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