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: R&D Lab Platform Engineering Lead, LRL Tech – Research

Path/Level: R1 (Roles are posted at the lowest level of a band; however, employees should search across all levels within the band to identify all opportunities. Employees hired into banded positions will transfer at their current level.)

Purpose:
At Lilly, we unite caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. As a global healthcare leader headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our 39,000 employees work to deliver life-changing medicines, advance the understanding and management of diseases, and strengthen our communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. We put people first, strive for excellence in our work, and are committed to making a difference worldwide.

We are looking for an R&D Lab Platform Engineering Lead who is passionate about building scalable, reliable, and high-performance platforms that accelerate scientific discovery. You will lead the platform engineering efforts for our R&D Lab environments, working at the intersection of engineering excellence and scientific innovation.

Key Responsibilities:

Define and manage Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for R&D Lab platforms in partnership with stakeholders and monitoring teams.

Develop dashboards and reports to communicate performance metrics and operational health.

Collaborate with cross-functional teams to embed reliability engineering principles throughout the software development lifecycle.

Architect, develop, and maintain automation solutions to eliminate manual operational tasks and improve system resilience.

Lead incident management, conduct root cause analysis, and implement preventive measures.

Evaluate, recommend, and implement observability tools and diagnostic techniques to enhance platform visibility and performance.

Engage in capacity planning, system design consulting, platform management, and launch readiness reviews.

Drive continuous improvement across platform reliability, scalability, and performance.

Oversee DevOps capabilities leveraging CI/CD pipelines, automation, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

Lead efforts to create meaningful telemetry dashboards for proactive system health monitoring and performance optimization.

Design and develop custom tools to streamline operations, increase efficiency, and challenge the status quo.

Ensure platform stability, availability, and scalability to support R&D initiatives.

Skills and Experience:

Experience: 5–8 years in DevOps, Platform Engineering, or SRE roles.

Strong problem-solving, analytical, and communication skills.

Adaptable and eager to learn emerging technologies.

Proficiency in scripting languages (Python, Bash, PowerShell).

Hands-on experience in incident management and Agile/DevOps methodologies.

Expertise in containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker Swarm, Kubernetes).

Proven experience managing AWS-based production infrastructure (Lambda, Glue, PySpark, etc.).

Familiarity with observability tools such as Splunk, CloudWatch.

Experience with configuration management tools (Puppet, Ansible, Chef, Terraform).

Proficiency in CI/CD tools (Git, Jenkins) and creating telemetry dashboards.

Experience building tools and automations to enhance operational efficiency.

Ability to monitor and enhance reliability and performance of infrastructure and applications.

Additional Preferred Skills:

Pharmaceutical IT experience is a strong advantage.

Demonstrated ability to coordinate and lead cross-functional teams.

Fast learner, with a proactive approach to technology adoption.

Excellent presentation and self-management skills.

Strong organizational abilities and decision-making based on risk evaluation.

Collaborative team player with experience working in dynamic, fast-paced environments.

About the Organization:
Lilly IT harnesses cutting-edge technologies to advance our purpose: creating medicines that improve lives worldwide. From data-driven drug discovery to connected clinical trials, we deliver innovative solutions across our business. With a focus on growth and global expansion, we are investing in advanced manufacturing facilities equipped with state-of-the-art, integrated systems that emphasize sustainability and operational excellence.

Note:
When applying internally, your current supervisor will receive notification. We encourage open discussions with your supervisor about career aspirations and opportunities.

Lilly is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

#WeAreLilly

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 does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status.

#WeAreLilly