Senior Director - External AI/ML Technology Search & Evaluation Engineering Lead

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.

Position Description

The Senior Director, External AI/ML Technology Search & Evaluation Engineering Lead will serve as the externally focused technical lead responsible for identifying, evaluating, and onboarding high-impact AI/ML models, agentic systems, and datasets from the global innovation ecosystem. This role is central to shaping the Catalyze360 platform’s engagement with cutting-edge external technologies and positioning Lilly at the forefront of AI-enabled drug discovery. You will lead the technical evaluation and onboarding of external models and data assets, build benchmarking infrastructure, and establish a public-facing leaderboard to drive visibility and participation.

This role will collaborate closely with platform product, business development, legal, and data science stakeholders to ensure effective onboarding of models and data into the Catalyze360 ecosystem and lay the foundation for scalable external contributions.

Key Responsibilities

• Technology Scouting and Evaluation

  • Lead the search for emerging AI/ML models, agentic systems, and tooling across startups, academic labs, open-source ecosystems, and vendors

  • Design and manage structured technical evaluations to assess external model feasibility, performance, and integration fit

  • Develop and maintain a landscape view of AI/ML innovations relevant to drug discovery

• Data Sourcing and Technical Diligence

  • Identify and evaluate external datasets that can improve platform models

  • Lead technical assessment of data quality, structure, harmonization potential, and licensing implications

  • Work with legal and BD teams to align on data access terms

• Benchmarking and Leaderboard Development

  • Design and launch a robust benchmarking capability for evaluating external model performance on defined drug discovery tasks

  • Establish technical standards, datasets, and metrics to support reproducible comparisons

  • Build and manage a public-facing leaderboard to elevate top performers and promote platform transparency

• Partner Enablement and Contribution Interface

  • Define technical requirements and documentation guidelines for external model contributions

  • Work closely with contributors to ensure alignment with platform standards and ease of onboarding

  • Support external-facing events, technical briefings, and hackathons to engage the broader AI/ML community

• Cross-Functional Integration

  • Collaborate with internal product and technical teams to coordinate handoff of models and data post-evaluation

  • Partner with Internal Tech @Lilly leads to integrate with federated learning infrastructure

Functional and Technical Expertise

• Expertise in AI/ML modeling, evaluation frameworks, and architecture trends, particularly for biomedical or multi-modal data

• Experience conducting technical diligence on external models, tools, and datasets

• Familiarity with public benchmarks, shared tasks, and leaderboard design

• Working knowledge of data licensing, privacy, and usage considerations

• Ability to assess external innovation in the context of platform performance and roadmap alignment

Influence and Leadership

• Strategic orientation with the ability to prioritize high-value opportunities in a rapidly evolving ecosystem

• Strong communication skills to engage external innovators and translate findings for internal stakeholders

• Comfortable interfacing with startups, academic labs, and technical leadership at peer companies

• Skilled at representing Lilly’s technical platform priorities in public and private forums

Basic Qualifications

• PhD, MS, or equivalent in computer science, AI/ML, data science, computational biology, or a related field

• 5+ years of experience (PhD) or 5+ years of experience (BS/MS) in AI/ML research, platform strategy, or technical product evaluation

Additional Prefe