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

BioSpace; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 188,000 - 303,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company in healthcare seeks a Senior Director to oversee the evaluation and integration of AI/ML technologies in drug discovery. This pivotal role will shape the future of external AI/ML engagement, ensuring cutting-edge innovations enhance their Catalyze360 platform. Ideal candidates will possess a PhD and significant experience in the field, eager to contribute to life-changing healthcare solutions.

Benefits

Comprehensive benefit program

401(k) with company match

Vacation benefits

Well-being benefits

Qualifications

• 5+ years experience in AI/ML research or related field.
• Experience in technical product evaluation.
• Familiarity with public benchmarks and data licensing.

Responsibilities

• Lead technology scouting and evaluation for AI/ML innovations.
• Identify and evaluate external datasets for platform improvements.
• Design benchmarking capability for evaluating external models.

Skills

AI/ML modeling

Technical evaluation

Data sourcing

Education

PhD in computer science, AI/ML, data science, or related field

Job description

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

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

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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 Preferences

• Prior experience in biotech, pharma, AI startups, or applied ML environments
• Experience designing or contributing to public model evaluation initiatives or benchmarks
  
  
  

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

$188,250 - $302,500

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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Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Director

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  Full-time

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