Director

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. 

The Director, RWD Strategy serves as Lilly's enterprise champion for RWD in Immunology, translating the rapidly evolving external data landscape into a coherent, high-impact internal strategy that accelerates drug development, strengthens regulatory submissions, and maximizes the scientific and commercial return on Lilly's RWD investments. This role operates at the intersection of science, strategy, execution, and innovation — owning the enterprise vision for how RWD in Immunology is identified, evaluated, acquired, governed, and leveraged across the full product lifecycle, from early development through post-marketing, and across therapeutic areas and business units. The leader in this role is proficient in scientific methodology and business strategy, capable of engaging credibly with scientists and senior leadership on portfolio prioritization and operational execution, and with data architects and engineers on infrastructure requirements.

Beyond portfolio-level governance and data stewardship, this leader is expected to actively shape the future of RWD at Lilly — by integrating AI and emerging technologies into the RWD workflow, building federated and privacy-preserving data capabilities, connecting RWD insights to clinical trial design and regulatory strategy, and ensuring Lilly's data assets reflect the diversity and complexity of real-world patient populations. The role carries responsibility not just for executing today's RWD agenda, but for anticipating what the field will require in three to five years and positioning Lilly to lead it.

This is a critical role requiring strong cross-functional influence, scientific credibility, external thought leadership, and the strategic judgment to align Lilly's RWD investments with its most important business and patient impact priorities.

Leadership in Real World Data Strategy

• Develop and drive the strategic vision for Immunology RWD utilization across the product lifecycle, from early development through post-marketing and connecting opportunities across functions for maximizing RWD use for patient and Lilly impact and in close collaboration with enterprise-level RWD acquisitions.
• Create a systematic framework for quantifying the value delivered by RWD investments — in terms of regulatory impact, commercial value, publications, clinical development acceleration, or avoided costs.
• Define and track enterprise RWD performance KPIs to measure impact, improve decision‑making, and optimize RWD investments
• Own Immunology RWD data landscaping and inventory across HEOR, SDIA, Statistics, Medical, Clinical, Regulatory and other functions
• Maintain a deep understanding of external landscape for RWD, knowledge of Lilly licensed RWD, and manage the inventory of RWD.
• Maintain ongoing competitive intelligence on external RWD strategy, data source adoption, regulatory submissions supported by RWE, and emerging data modalities, and translating these insights into strategic recommendations for Lilly's Immunology and enterprise RWD portfolio.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with key Lilly stakeholders (e.g. Medical Affairs, SDIA, BI&A, HEOR, Epidemiology, Lilly Value Access, Tech@Lilly,  etc) to identify data gaps, redundancies and opportunities where RWD can inform decision making to avoid redundancy and improve ROI.
• Lead the identification, evaluation, acquisition and cross-BU coordination of fit-for-purpose, high-value Immunology RWD sources (e.g., Pharmetrics, Truveta), aligned with scientific and business needs that match RWD sources to research questions
• Establish and operationalize systematic data landscaping as the enterprise process for identifying, evaluating, and prioritizing RWD sources
• Evaluate and operationalize federated learning partnerships, synthetic data use cases, and privacy-enhancing computation methods, in collaboration with Tech@Lilly and external data partners.
• Lead the development, communication, and adherence to RWD health information standards, tools and technology and processes for RWE generation, with a particular focus on leveraging RWD/E in regulatory decision.
• Develop strategy for integrating SDOH, patient-reported outcomes, digital/wearable biomarker, imaging, -omics data into Lilly's RWD infrastructure, with particular attention to health equity and diverse population representation in evidence generation.

Real World Data Innovation and Analytics

• Drive greater value to the portfolio by delivering innovative RWD solutions (e.g. new applications of RWD), evaluating non-traditional sources of RWD and enabling and applying new RWD capabilities (e.g. tokenization of data)
• Demonstrate advance proficiency in RWE methodologies and data analytics, ensuring the generation of rigorous and impactful science

Access to and Maintenance of RWD

• Lead RFP processes for new data sources and coordinated data acquisition and usage.
• Exercise broad knowledge of data partners, procurement pathways, and business value to guide investment decisions.
• Extract value from RWD sources and RWD providers through strategic development of relationships with external stakeholders including data vendors, academic institutions, and consortia to expand RWD data capabilities and thought leadership and explore mutual benefit partnerships, volume discounts, single use, or long-term investments.
• Promote consistent, transparent decision‑making regarding source selection, contract terms, and portfolio priorities.
• Operationalize structured governance for RWD investments, participating in or supporting the RWD Steering Committee and other cross‑functional decision-right structures.
• Maintain current RWD information in the RWE business process and knowledge management solution, Pangaea and Data Marketplace.
• Continually seek and implement means of improving processes to reduce cycle time and decrease work effort to maximize the return of the investment (i.e., technology purchases, data strategies, etc.) of the RWE health information assets/domains managed.

Asset Protection

• Understand the confidential nature of RWD, personal health information, and company information and take necessary steps to protect it.  This includes understanding various aspects of privacy as it relates to RWD and Protect Lilly.
  • Accept obligation on behalf of Lilly to ensure compliance that reflects the integrity of the company, including adherence to contracts outlining access, maintenance, use, and storage of data.

RWD Training, Education & Enablement

• Obtain all necessary RWD source documentation prior to contract signage. 
• Ensure all RWD documentation is centrally housed and easily accessible.
• Facilitate RWD trainings and learning sessions to increase RWD literacy and speed to insights.
• Ensure teams can appropriately interpret source capabilities, limitations, and fit‑for‑purpose considerations.

Basic Qualifications

• Advanced degree (PharmD, MD, PhD, MS, MSN, MPH) in a quantitative or health related field
• Extensive experience (5+ years) working hands on with a wide range of RWD sources including selecting, evaluating or using RWD sources and healthcare data structure (claims, EMR, registry,multi-modal RWD – RNA, DNA, proteomics,imaging.
• Experience and knowledge with key applications of RWD partners, tools (e.g. tokenization, regulatory use cases, etc) and procurement processes to identify and facilitate generation of bespoke unique to Lilly RWD sets (e.g., Truveta + Lilly Direct data – GiftHealth)
• Demonstrated knowledge of drug development across the product lifecycle, commercial awareness, business acumen, and customer focus
• Previous experience with broad and deep range of RWD partners and tools including matching sources to research questions across therapeutic areas and knowledge of procurement and business value to present ROI to teams
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills
• Ability to navigate assessment and optimal usage of RWD through AI
• Experience developing or executing global or enterprise RWD strategy

Additional Skills/Preferences

• Demonstrated ability to influence decision-making and network effectively to achieve cross-functional alignment
• Strong analytic skills (e.g. ability to program in SAS, R, Python, etc)
• Experience in delivering innovative capabilities
• Demonstrate leadership skills in influencing stakeholders to resolve conflicts
• Strong comprehension and communication skills, both written and verbal
• Domestic and international travel may be necessary

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

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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