Associate Director - Enterprise Data Platforms Operations

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.

Are you passionate about transforming enterprise-scale data experiences through modern data platforms, autonomous operations, and AI-driven reliability engineering?

The Enterprise Data Platforms Operations organization is seeking an Associate Director to provide strategic leadership for data platform operations and modernization initiatives spanning both cloud and on‑premise environments. In this role, you will champion platform reliability, drive an automation‑first culture, and deliver scalable, enterprise‑critical capabilities that enable advanced analytics, AI, and digital innovation

What You’ll Be Doing:

As a leader, you will manage a newly formed team of 12- 14 engineers responsible for strategic enterprise data platforms, promoting engineering excellence, automation, accountability, and ongoing improvement.

How You’ll Succeed:

Strategic Leadership & Portfolio Management

• Lead the strategy, roadmap, and execution of enterprise data platform operations initiatives with an SRE-first, product-centric mindset focused on reliability, automation, and user value.
• Evolve the portfolio of platforms operations of cloud databases, data Integration services, BI/analytics platforms, integration frameworks, and on-premises systems such as Oracle, Exadata, MQ, and Informatica.
• Ensure alignment with enterprise data strategy, Digital Core priorities, cybersecurity requirements, and long-term architectural direction.
• Embed platform governance, lifecycle management, compliance, and observability into every aspect of the portfolio.

Operational Excellence

• Oversee 24/7 operations with an emphasis on platform resilience, capacity, disaster recovery, cost visibility, and performance engineering.
• Drive the adoption of AI Ops, predictive monitoring, anomaly detection, and automated root cause analysis to reduce operational toil and accelerate recovery.
• Implement SLO-driven operations, distributed tracing, platform telemetry, and real-time observability across data pipelines, integrations, and platform services.
• Champion end-to-end automation and self-healing orchestration to eliminate manual intervention and accelerate speed-to-value.

People Development & Team Performance

• Lead and grow a diverse, inclusive global team of engineering managers, SREs, platform engineers, and operations specialists.
• Set clear goals, build leadership capability, and establish a culture of continuous learning, ownership, and engineering excellence.
• Coach teams to build deep expertise in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, OCI), SRE frameworks, DevOps, Data Ops, AI Ops, and enterprise tooling.
• Scale and develop a strong leadership bench across India and global locations, ensuring long-term succession, career pathways, and talent retention.

Enterprise Collaboration & Influence

• Serve as a strategic partner across platform engineering, analytics, AI/ML, architecture, cybersecurity, and business domains to ensure platforms meet evolving stakeholder needs.
• Translate business requirements into scalable platform capabilities, ensuring adoption, reliability, and measurable business outcomes.
• Lead cross-functional modernization initiatives and represent the platform operations organization in enterprise governance and architecture forums.
• Influence enterprise-wide decisions on technology standards, platform patterns, and operating models.

Technology Strategy & Supplier Engagement

• Evaluate emerging technologies in cloud data platforms, observability tooling, autonomous operations, and agentic AI, recommending future-state architectures.
• Drive the selection, onboarding, and integration of tools that strengthen reliability, automation, and long-term scalability.
• Lead vendor and supplier engagements including RFI/RFP cycles, contract negotiations, and performance management.
• Ensure service partners support operational excellence, continuous modernization, and AI-driven efficiencies.

What You Should Bring:

• Proven experience leading enterprise-scale data platform operations, engineering teams or SRE organizations.
• Deep understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, OCI), on-prem data technologies, observability systems, and modern architectural frameworks.
• Demonstrated success in driving automation-first transformations, reducing operational complexity, and delivering high-availability platforms.
• Experience managing budgets, cost optimization, forecasting, and FinOps practices across multi-cloud environments.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills with the ability to influence across technical and business leadership.
• Excellent communication, analytical, and problem-solving abilities with a track record of delivering complex platform programs.
• Commitment to inclusion, talent development, and building high-performing engineering cultures.

Basic Requirements: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field and 5+ years leading complex IT or platform engineering teams - formal people leadership.
   

Additional Information:

• Position requires <10% travel 1-2 trips a year to Hyderabad, India.
• Onsite role located in Indianapolis, Indiana (relocation required).
• Work Schedule:
  • 11:30am – 8:30pm EST (Nov-Mar)
  • 12:30pm – 9:30 pm EDT (Mar-Nov)

Organization Overview

Lilly IT builds and maintains capabilities using cutting edge technologies like most prominent tech companies. What differentiates Lilly IT is that we redefine what’s possible through tech to advance our purpose – creating medicines that make life better for people around the world, like data driven drug discovery and connected clinical trials. We hire the best technology professionals from a variety of backgrounds, so they can bring an assortment of knowledge, skills, and diverse thinking to deliver innovative solutions in every area of our business.

The Global Information and Services Tech team is at the forefront of digitalization to enable and advance the entire company, with increased productivity and best-in-class Customer experiences. This team provides a robust and sustainable infrastructure of hardware, software and services that are critical to enable our global workforce and business to operate and transform. As leaders in technology and understanding business requirements and

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 Network, Black Employees at Lilly, Chinese Culture Network, Japanese International Leadership Network (JILN), Lilly India Network, Organization of Latinx at Lilly (OLA), PRIDE (LGBTQ+ Allies), Veterans Leadership Network (VLN), Women’s Initiative for Leading at Lilly (WILL), enAble (for people with disabilities). Learn more about all of our groups.

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

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.

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