Senior Director - Clinical Tech Design and Operations
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 Summary
This M3 leader directs the technology strategy and delivery for Clinical Design and Operations, leading through subordinate managers and holding leadership responsibility for a portfolio of clinical technology capabilities. The role requires technical knowledge and cross-functional leadership, an understanding of how clinical design and operations interacts with other business areas to achieve functional objectives , and the judgment to make decisions with significant impact on the function. Consistent with Lilly's technology direction, this leader is technically fluent and deeply AI-aware, championing AI and agentic adoption, resolving complex technical challenges, and ensuring teams build modern, compliant, high-value solutions.
Key Responsibilities
Lead the Clinical Design and Operations technology portfolio through subordinate managers, developing business-area plans and managing resources to meet financial and operational objectives .
Set and drive the technical and AI strategy, championing AI, agentic workflows, and intelligent automation to raise capability and value.
Evaluate and resolve complex business, operational, and technical challenges spanning multiple clinical capabilities.
Make decisions, guided by functional strategy, that significantly impact the clinical design and operations function.
Build collaborative relationships and influence internal and external partners across multiple business areas to align on technology direction.
Ensure portfolio solutions meet GxP , security, and quality requirements from design through delivery.
Maintain technical depth sufficient to guide architecture, engineering, and AI-adoption decisions and to challenge solution trade-offs.
Build technical and AI capability across managers and engineers through knowledge-sharing and upskilling.
Forecast and manage resources to meet operational and financial objectives across the portfolio.
Represent clinical design and operations technology in governance forums, contributing to standards and investment decisions.
Basic Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology or related field.
Minimum 8+ years' experience in technology delivery or engineering leadership, including leadership through subordinate managers.
Experience delivering within Agile/ SAFe environments and product-led operating models.
Strong stakeholder management, able to influence across multiple business areas and with external partners.
Preferred Qualifications
Technical knowledge and cross-functional leadership, with understanding of how clinical design and operations interacts with other business areas.
Hands-on experience leveraging AI in day-to-day delivery and championing its adoption across teams.
Proven ability to evaluate and resolve complex business, operational, and technical problems.
Experience managing budgets and resources to meet financial and operational objectives .
Experience in clinical development, Good Clinical Practice (GCP), or a regulated ( GxP) environment within pharmaceutical, biotech, or healthcare.
Advanced degree in a technical , scientific, or business discipline.
Working knowledge of AI/ML and agentic capabilities and their applicability to clinical operations.
Familiarity with enterprise/clinical architecture and platform strategy.
Experience operating within a formal IT governance or product operating model.
Relevant leadership, Agile/ SAFe , cloud, or AI certifications.
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
$157,500 - $231,000
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
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Information Technology role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 41 comparable Senior Director Information Technology roles across 18 biopharma companies.
Salary context
18 of 41 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 41 comparable roles
Seniority mix
41 of 41 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
1 of 41 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
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.
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.
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.