Lilly Posted November 11, 2026

Scientist, Dissolution & Biopharmaceutical Modeling

Indianapolis, Indiana, United States of America FULL_TIME
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Lilly is the source of truth for this posting and owns the application process. We surface normalized context and market comparison you won't find on the original listing.

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.

Organization and Position Overview:

At Lilly, Synthetic Molecule Design and Development (SMDD) is involved in key activities for the development of synthetic active pharmaceutical ingredients from pre-clinical phases through commercialization of drug substances and drug products. Our scientists and engineers develop key technical and business solutions across the portfolio using their deep technical expertise to accelerate testing of clinical hypothesis and overall drug development. SMDD delivers on these responsibilities by recognizing diverse talent and cultures are necessary to bring the next generation of life changing medicines to patients.

Candidates should have hands-on experience in analytical chemistry and/or pharmaceutical sciences, including exposure to techniques such as spectroscopy, chromatography, formulation development, or biopharmaceutics. They should be motivated to continue building their skills and deepen their understanding of molecular properties, product and process design, and product performance in order to support drug product development from early research through commercialization.

Responsibilities 

Developing analytical methods and conducting experiments to aid early clinical formulation development to enable drug delivery of a broad range of synthetic drug molecules.

Collaborating with formulation scientists to design experiments and guide selection and characterization of formulations for pre-clinical and early clinical drug candidates.

Partnering with biopharmaceutical modeling scientists, analytical chemists, pharmaceutical scientists, and engineers to identify the appropriate drug form, formulation, and process characteristics that provide the desired drug product performance.

Identifying and mitigating technical risks for the performance and production of clinical and commercial drug products.

Operating, maintaining, and troubleshooting automated dissolution systems, including hardware and instrument control software.

Overseeing instrument qualification, calibration, and preventive maintenance of dissolution equipment, and partnering with vendors and laboratory support groups to resolve instrument issues and minimize downtime.

Investigating atypical dissolution results and data anomalies  and implementing appropriate corrective and preventive actions.

Executing with attention to safety, quality, regulatory, GLP/GMP, and legal requirements for all activities.

Authoring key regulatory documents demonstrating appropriate understanding of product performance control strategy and biopharmaceutics risk mitigation for clinical trials product commercialization.

Embrace diverse thought, background, and experience to deliver innovative solutions.

Possess strong communication (oral, written), organizational, and leadership skills.

Engaging and influencing the external scientific community to foster collaborations for innovation and to advance Lilly’s internal portfolio.

Basic Requirements: 

B.S. in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Pharmaceutical Science, or other directly related discipline (e.g., Material Science)

Understanding of analytical techniques and methods for characterizing physicochemical properties of drug molecules and performance of drug products (e.g., HPLC, UV, NIR, dissolution)

Strong leadership, supervisor, teamwork, communication and writing skills.

Qualified applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Lilly will not provide support for or sponsor work authorization or visas for this role, including but not limited to F-1 CPT, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, J-1, H-1B, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, or L-1.

Additional Skills/Preferences:  

Career experience relevant to the position is strongly preferred.

Demonstrated experience with development, validation, and transfer of analytical methods, especially dissolution, UV-Vis and HPLC.

Hands-on experience operating and troubleshooting automated dissolution systems, including autosamplers, fraction collectors, online UV/fiber-optic analysis and hardware/instrument control software.

Knowledge of biopharmaceutics and pharmacokinetic principles, formulation development and pharmaceutical material sciences, and drug product factors impacting in vivo performance and manufacture

Basic understanding of regulatory aspects pertaining to development and clinical testing of drug products

Other Information: 

This position will be on our LTC-N Campus in Indianapolis, IN

Travel:  0-10%

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 (AMECA), Black Employees at Lilly (BE@Lilly), Chinese Culture Network (CCN), EnAble, Evolve, Lilly Indian Network (LIN), Organization of Latinx at Lilly (OLA), Pride (LGBTQ+ Allies), Veterans Leadership Network (VLN) and Women’s Initiative for Leading at Lilly (WILL).

Actual compensation will depend on a candidate’s education, experience, skills, and geographic location.  The anticipated wage for this position is

$66,000 - $171,600

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.

#WeAreLilly

Job details

Seniority
Not listed
Function
Drug Discovery & Preclinical Research
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
Indianapolis, Indiana, United States of America
Employment type
FULL_TIME

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 913 comparable Drug Discovery & Preclinical Research roles across 88 biopharma companies.

913Comparable roles tracked
851Currently active
88Companies hiring similar roles
32Countries represented

Salary context

354 of 913 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)

Peers share this role's job function. This posting doesn't list a seniority level, so peers aren't narrowed by seniority either -- the range below may span more levels than usual.

This roleSubject $66,000/yr – $171,600/yr
Highest disclosed · Vice President, Therapeutics Immunology · ModernaTX, Inc. $272,200/yr – $490,100/yr
Peer group range $0 – $381,150 (median $155,000)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 913 comparable roles

United States626
China46
Germany37
Switzerland30
United Kingdom28
France27

+ 26 more countries

Seniority mix

655 of 913 peers have a known seniority level

Senior216
Principal149
Intern/Fellow/Postdoc70
Associate61
Director61
Associate Director32
Manager27
Senior Director24
Executive/VP15

Therapeutic area mix

124 of 913 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Immunology50
Oncology43
Neuroscience15
Cardiovascular / CVRM9
Respiratory3
Vaccines & Infectious Disease2
Rare Disease2

Similar opportunities

The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.

40%similar
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40%similar
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How we calculate "similar"

No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.

Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.

40%
Executive Director, Global Product Lead, Immunology Research and Development
AstraZeneca · Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America · Executive/VP
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
Senior Scientist Mass Spectrometrist
Pharmacia & Upjohn Company · Groton, United States · Senior
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
Senior Principal Research Scientist Engineering
AbbVie · North Chicago, IL · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
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AbbVie · San Francisco, CA · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
Unmatched or unknown dimensions score exactly the same: 0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.