Advisor, Computational Chemistry
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About this opportunity
At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve. This is hard, urgent, selfless work, but it’s work worth doing. If you’re driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us.
Position Overview
At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in the United States, in Indianapolis, Indiana since 1876, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve. This is hard, urgent, selfless work, but it’s worth doing. If you’re driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us.
The Product Research and Development (PR&D) organization strives to develop and deliver quality medicines to patients. The portfolio consists of development and commercialization of insulins, small molecules, monoclonal antibodies, novel therapeutic proteins, peptides, oligonucleotide therapies, vaccines, and gene therapy systems. This organization is a multidisciplinary group that works collaboratively with therapeutic business units and manufacturing to deliver the incredibly exciting Lilly clinical portfolio to patients around the world.
The Lilly Bengaluru site located in Bengaluru India, since 2016, is a strategic investment made by Lilly to attract top talent from the vibrant academic and professional environment in India and deploy them to develop and enable critical capabilities for Lilly. The Lilly Bengaluru in India houses a PR&D team that works closely with the PR&D team in the USA in enabling the delivery of Lilly’s portfolio.
Individually, the Computational Chemist:
Designs, develops, and applies new, customized computational models/tools, AI/ML tools, where necessary and available, and applies on commercial computer modeling software or on open-source systems.
Contributes to research projects and programs focused on development of specific synthetic molecule drug substance and drug product for clinical and commercial use.
Promotes general research and development effectiveness and productivity enhancement through application of computer modeling
Contributes to the advancement and overall knowledge of computer modeling within Product Research and Development and adopt matrix working environment.
Work may be conducted independently, or more frequently, as part of a product development team consisting of scientists with Chemists, Engineers, Data Sciences, and IT teams.
Key Responsibilities
Lead retrosynthesis AI/ML and reaction-prediction efforts for synthetic molecule route design and development, applying tools such as ASKCOS, Synthia, Reaxys to translate outputs into route and risk decisions.
Understand, execute and integrate retrosynthesis AI/ML models and quantum mechanical (QM) models to synthetic molecules
Develop molecular level mechanistic knowledge to support CM&C control strategy.
Help create and deploy data chemistry platforms and databases with regards to synthetic metrics that help drive and inform business decisions
Understand and apply QM concepts, reaction thermodynamics, transition state analysis, product/impurity prediction, collaborate effectively with chemists and chemical engineers.
Assess synthetic routes for design and process risk, prioritizing where risk concentrates before experimental work begins, in collaboration with lab chemists and engineers.
Contribute to advancing internal predictive tools. Identify gaps, evaluate new methods, drive adoption within PR&D.
Education Requirements
Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry or Chemistry with 1-3 years of research and development in industry or postdoctoral experience in computational chemistry applied to pharmaceutical molecules, materials, or chemical applications.
Position Requirements
Substantial computational modeling expertise and demonstrated through publications and/or development of computational modeling tools.
Familiarity in applying a machine learning framework for chemical reaction mechanism predictions and automated transition state prediction tools.
Working fluency in Python and standard cheminformatics/ML libraries and experience in using LLM and agentic tooling to accelerate the work.
Experience with QM frameworks (DFT, TS analysis) and machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs), and awareness of common software (Gaussian, Schrodinger, Psi4, etc.) and automate computational workflows.
Working with modeling and AI/ML tools in UNIX/Linux and HPC environments.
Strong communicator. Works fluidly between bench chemists and computational and data scientists without either side needing a translator.
Excellent communication, presentation and documentation skills are required.
Experience working in multidisciplinary teams spanning Chemists, Engineers, Data Sciences, and IT teams.
Additional Information
Limited international travel (0-10%) will be required
Work hours flexibility to accommodate collaboration across multiple time zones
Position Location: Bengaluru, India.
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
Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Drug Discovery & Preclinical Research role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 157 comparable Associate Drug Discovery & Preclinical Research roles across 40 biopharma companies.
Salary context
46 of 157 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 157 comparable roles
+ 8 more countries
Seniority mix
157 of 157 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
23 of 157 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
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