Sr. Director of Strategic Partnerships, TuneLab Platform

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 Overview Lilly Catalyze360 is a comprehensive approach to enabling the early-stage biotech ecosystem by democratizing access to infrastructure, expertise, and resources. Through its interconnected pillars - Lilly Ventures, Lilly Gateway Labs, Lilly ExploR&D, and Lilly TuneLab - Catalyze360 strategically removes barriers that traditionally block bold science from becoming life-changing medicines, providing biotechs with flexible combinations of capital, physical lab space, R&D capabilities, AI/ML tools, and decades of enterprise learning. Lilly TuneLab is an artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) platform that provides biotech companies access to drug discovery models trained on years of Lilly's research data. Lilly estimates that this first release of AI models includes proprietary data obtained at a cost of over $1 billion, representing one of the industry's most valuable datasets used to train an AI system available to biotechnology companies.  By integrating advanced in silico modelling and federated learning, we connect pioneering machine learning algorithms, substantial computational power, exclusive datasets, and Lilly’s domain-specific knowledge to drive innovation in drug discovery and facilitate access to optimal therapies for patients.

Help transform drug discovery by building the strategic partnerships that power TuneLab's AI/ML platform. This role is essential in supporting the growth and evolution of the Lilly TuneLab platform’s business model, and resulting partnership strategy, to ensure its success in transforming drug discovery and development. The ideal individual will thrive at the creation of novel strategic partnerships at the intersection of AI/ML and drug discovery, and be able to operate effectively across the end-to-end strategic partnership ideation, development and execution process across a wide range of partner companies by both size and sector (e.g. tech, biotech, pharma, AI/ML startups, and service providers) collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to drive these transactions to completion.

Partnership Strategy & Development Evaluate and advance partnership opportunities across multiple domains as we develop the TuneLab ecosystem. Examples include: AI/ML leaders : Engage with market leading AI/ML companies of all sizes to access and build next-generation AI/ML models for drug discovery. Biotech : Identify data contributions that fit specific use cases, facilitating collaborations that align with platform needs. Service Providers (e.g. CROs) : Develop standardized and streamlined services for platform participants to ensure seamless integration into their workflows. Data Acquisition and Generation : Identify and evaluate opportunities to acquire or generate data that supports the platform's AI/ML models and use cases. Establish partnerships to ensure access to high-quality data necessary for driving drug discovery outcomes. Continuously evolve the platform’s strategy by understanding how AI/ML capabilities are being developed, both in commercial and open-source environments, to ensure differentiation of our offering. Deal Execution and Operational Excellence Own the process of continually driving deal progress, including efficiently coordinating complex