Senior Director, Software Engineering - Silicon Valley Hub
About The Position
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. Lilly's Software Product Engineering (SPE) organization builds the platforms and products that power how Lilly discovers medicines, runs clinical trials, manufactures at scale, brings therapies to market, and supports patients across their care journey. Our portfolio spans agentic AI platforms, drug discovery tooling, connected lab and clinical systems, patient-facing digital products, and enterprise developer infrastructure used across the company. SPE engineers ship software that is used daily by Lilly scientists, clinicians, commercial teams, and patients themselves. We are growing our Bay Area engineering presence to be closer to the talent, partners, and pace of innovation that the region uniquely offers. As a Software Engineering Lead based in the San Francisco Bay Area, you will be a senior technical contributor and team leader working on the platforms and products at the core of SPE's portfolio — shaping architecture, raising the engineering bar, and helping us build software that meaningfully accelerates Lilly's mission.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with demonstrated experience leading architecture, design, and delivery of production systems.
- Technical Experience with multiple programming languages, including at least Python and TypeScript / JavaScript.
- Experience delivering software across the full development lifecycle — design, development, testing, deployment, and operation — using modern engineering practices.
- Experience with DevOps practices and Linux-based container and cloud environments.
- Experience in data modeling and querying with SQL relational databases.
Nice To Haves
- Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field.
- Prior experience as a tech lead, principal engineer, staff engineer, or engineering manager in a high-performing software organization.
- Experience building developer platforms, internal tools, or SDKs used by other engineering teams at scale.
- Experience with agentic AI systems, LLM application development, or AI-native developer tooling.
- Experience operating software in a regulated environment (life sciences, healthcare, financial services, or similar).
- Open-source contributions, technical writing, or conference talks that demonstrate engineering perspective and external impact.
Responsibilities
- Lead architecture and design across multiple platform components in the SPE portfolio, making the technical decisions that determine how our systems scale, evolve, and integrate.
- Write production code on critical platform components — including core services, SDKs, and developer-facing APIs — and set the bar for code quality, testing, and operability across the team.
- Lead engineering teams of full-time engineers and partner resources, providing technical direction, design review, and day-to-day mentorship that develops the next generation of senior engineers.
- Partner with product managers, designers, architects, and SPE leadership to translate ambiguous problems into clear technical roadmaps, with realistic delivery plans and well-scoped milestones.
- Drive adoption of platform standards, architecture patterns, and engineering practices across SPE — including service design, API design, observability, security, and CI/CD.
- Evaluate emerging technologies — including agentic AI frameworks, LLM application patterns, and modern developer platforms — and build proofs of concept that move our roadmap forward.
- Work across SPE teams in Indianapolis, San Diego, the UK, and India, and with partners across Lilly Research Labs, Tech@Lilly, and the broader business, to ship integrated solutions.
- Bring an external perspective to internal work — staying current with how leading engineering organizations build, deploy, and operate software at scale, and applying that perspective to lift our practices.
Benefits
- company bonus (depending, in part, on company and individual performance)
- company-sponsored 401(k)
- pension
- vacation benefits
- 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
- well-being benefits (e.g., employee assistance program, fitness benefits, and employee clubs and activities)
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
