Director, Generative Biotherapeutics Design & Optimization

Biopharma Careers; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 360,000; Full time

Job summary

Lilly in San Diego is seeking a Director of Generative Design & Optimization to lead de novo biologics design capabilities, transforming foundation-model outputs into experimentally testable therapeutic candidates.

You will build and scale integrated design pipelines across conditioning, sampling, scoring and validation, while mentoring AI researchers and computational scientists and defining the technical strategy that advances therapeutic discovery.

Responsibilities

• Conditioning and controllable molecule design: lead methods steering foundation-model output toward epitope-specific designs.
• Sampling and optimization: devise iterative layer and sampling strategy balancing exploration and exploitation.
• Scoring and selection: develop ranking methods combining learned and physics-based signals for prioritizing designs.
• Training corpus strategy: versioned training, fine-tuning and evaluation corpora with provenance and splits.
• Build and scale integrated design pipelines spanning generation, sampling, optimization, scoring and selection across programs.
• Set performance evaluation: connect computational design quality to experimental outcomes and therapeutic goals.
• Lead a high-performing team and provide scientific leadership; recruit and develop scientists and engineers, establish standards.
• Collaboration: work with Foundation Models and Active Learning teams to benchmark and test against evidence.

Job description

Lilly in San Diego is seeking a Director of Generative Design & Optimization to lead de novo biologics design capabilities, transforming foundation-model outputs into experimentally testable therapeutic candidates.

You will build and scale integrated design pipelines across conditioning, sampling, scoring and validation, while mentoring AI researchers and computational scientists and defining the technical strategy that advances therapeutic discovery.