Senior ML Engineer — Drug Discovery & R&D Ops

Elanco; Indianapolis (IN); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation packages

Two weeklong shutdowns (US)

8-week parental leave

Employee Resource Groups

Annual bonus offering

Flexible work arrangements

Up to 6% 401K matching

Job summary

Elanco, a global leader in animal health, seeks an ML Engineer – Drug Discovery & R&D Operations in Indianapolis to accelerate its R&D portfolio by turning proprietary data into predictive models. You will collaborate with discovery and development scientists to build ML and CV models across molecular, in vitro, ADMET, and imaging data to support target identification and biomarker endpoints.

You will design and deploy models on multi-modal data, drive data collection standards, and lead

Qualifications

• PhD in a quantitative field or Master’s with substantial hands-on ML/CV experience.
• 7+ years of industry experience building and deploying ML and computer-vision models for biomedical, pharmaceutical, or related domains.
• Strong Python skills and proficiency with ML/CV libraries (PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, OpenCV).

Responsibilities

• Lead ML/CV work for key R&D programs, turning target identification and molecular data into modeling problems with clear success criteria.
• Design, build, and validate advanced ML and CV models on multi-modal data to deliver reliable predictions and classifications.
• Shape data collection, annotation, and synthetic data usage with experimental teams and quality checks; evaluate synthetic data and augmentation to strengthen sparse datasets.
• Operationalize models in R&D workflows by integrating with Databricks and influencing standards for reproducibility and governance.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship by guiding junior scientists and leading cross-functional modeling initiatives.

Skills

Python

ML/CV libraries

PyTorch

TensorFlow

scikit-learn

OpenCV

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

PhD in a quantitative field

Master’s with ML/CV experience

Tools

Databricks

MLOps tools

Job description

Elanco, a global leader in animal health, seeks an ML Engineer – Drug Discovery & R&D Operations in Indianapolis to accelerate its R&D portfolio by turning proprietary data into predictive models. You will collaborate with discovery and development scientists to build ML and CV models across molecular, in vitro, ADMET, and imaging data to support target identification and biomarker endpoints.

You will design and deploy models on multi-modal data, drive data collection standards, and lead