Sr. Advisor / Scientific Director - Medicinal Chemistry for Early Molecule 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 newly created Early Molecule Discovery team is responsible for small molecule Hit-ID and Hit-to-Lead prosecution through the judicious and creative application of best in class and novel approaches applied to portfolio targets. We seek a medicinal chemist with a demonstrated ability to successfully apply medicinal chemistry principles and in silico technologies (structure-based, model-based, computer-assisted drug design) to drive the discovery of quality Lead molecules against hard-to-drug therapeutic targets.  

The candidate will be a key member of a collaborative and fast-paced cross-functional drug discovery team. This is a lead from the bench role, we therefore seek a hands-on candidate who dives deep in data and can deftly leverage fragment-, ligand- and structure-based drug design approaches to impact the creative and timely design and elaboration of Hit towards Lead. The candidate will be leading internal and/or external medicinal chemists to test multiple hypothesis in parallel to improve potency, efficacy, selectivity and ADMET properties in Hit-to-Lead SAR campaigns.   

The candidate will be highly collaborative and foster seamless collaborations with integrated pharmacology, structural biology, computational and medicinal chemistry teams to propose novel hypothesis to improve protein-ligand interaction, creatively design new small molecules, recommend synthetic routes and conduct synthesis to drive accelerated Hit-to-Lead learning cycles. The candidate will judiciously apply conventional and state-of-the-art synthetic technology to deliver chemical structures that are otherwise hard to access.  

The position requires a positive can-do attitude, and excellent interpersonal skills necessary to effectively influence in a cross-functional and fast-paced team environment, and ideally, experience in leading Hit-to-Lead medicinal chemistry projects.  

Responsibilities:  

• Optimize Hits to improve potency, selectivity, physicochemical properties and ADMET towards Leads, across multiple target classes and therapeutic areas   
• Utilize state-of-the-art structure-based drug design technologies and partner with colleagues in computational chemistry, structural biology and in vitro pharmacology to characterize protein-ligand interactions and gain insights supporting novel molecular design 
• Design and synthesize novel small molecules to test hypothesis improving protein-ligand interaction  
• Effectively lead internal and/or external chemistry resources to implement design ideas 
• Collaborate with colleagues specialized in novel chemistry development, high-throughput automated synthesis, route optimization and scale-up 
• Keep safety as the top priority, striving to maintain a strong safety culture. Deliver high laboratory synthetic efficiency to direct fast-paced SAR iterations through proposal and execution of synthetic routes 
• Provide scientific leadership and strategic guidance to enable small molecule hit-ID and Hit-to-Lead discovery efforts.
• Partner cross-functionally to address specific program needs, provide Medicinal Chemistry perspectives and increase overall organizational acuity  
• Collaboratively engage the external scientific community 

Basic Qualifications: 

• PhD in Organic Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry or related field with 5+ years relevant research and/or industrial experience; a Masters Science Degree with 8+ years relevant research and/or industry experience; or a Bachelor of Science Degree with 10+ years relevant research and/or industry experience   
• Extensive hand-on experience in designing and synthesizing drug-like molecules using medicinal chemistry knowledge, SAR analysis, x-ray or cryo-EM structures and computer-assisted modeling 

Preferred Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, Experiences: 

• Contemporary understanding of protein-ligand binding efficiency, energetics, and how to optimize
• Lead from bench mindset; Lead by example; Lead by action
• Sees personal success as part of team success
• Tra