Associate Director - Project Management External Innovation

US, Indianapolis IN; US, Boston MA
Full-time
$150,000 - $220,000
Posted Nov 11, 2026

Skills

Budgeting
Communication
Leadership
Procurement
Project Management
Teamwork

Job description

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:

At Eli Lilly and Company, we unite caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. Lilly is a leader in global healthcare and has been discovering and developing medicines that help improve lives for more than 140 years. Our 50,000 employees around the world work as a team to bring breakthrough medicines to patients who need them. We are looking for motivated, highly skilled scientists and engineers to help us continue to bring breakthrough medicines to patients.

Delivery, Devices, and Connected Solutions (DDCS) sits within Lilly's Product Research & Development organization. We are a diverse team of scientists and engineers responsible for discovering, designing, and developing patient-centric drug delivery solutions across a broad range of modalities — from injection devices to novel routes of administration and nanomedicines. DDCS drives the drug delivery innovation agenda across early and late development to meet the needs of an expanding portfolio that spans small molecules, biologics, and nucleic acid therapeutics.

Position Overview:

DDCS External Innovation is Lilly’s enterprise-wide function for identifying, evaluating, and advancing external drug delivery and device technologies based on technical merit and strategic fit. Working across all therapeutic areas, the organization connects emerging science and external innovation to Lilly’s portfolio needs, spanning academic collaborations through licensing, strategic partnerships, and acquisitions. Its mandate is to build a differentiated external innovation pipeline that expands Lilly’s delivery capabilities and enables the future portfolio.

The Associate Director, Project Management owns the execution side of External Innovation. The role runs the operating rhythm of trackers, action logs, and owns project management for all active collaborations, keeping plans, milestones, and risks visible from kickoff through completion. The ideal candidate is a detail-oriented, scientifically fluent program manager with pharmaceutical or device experience and strong written communication. They also run the day-to-day operations of External Innovation in Drug Delivery, Devices, and Connected Solutions.

Key Responsibilities:

Operating rhythm

•Maintain the external meeting tracker: partner, purpose, attendees, outcome, and follow-ups, with overdue items flagged.

•Keep a consolidated action and decision log across forums and active collaborations with owners and due dates, and track actions to closure.

•Own email correspondence with most external companies: send scheduling, information requests, follow-ups, and status updates; keep partner threads organized and answered promptly.

•Triage inbound meeting and information requests and prepare short briefs, so decisions can be made quickly and not start from scratch.

Active collaboration project management

•Own the project management side of all active collaborations, serving as the single point of contact for plans, timelines, and status meetings from kickoff through completion.

•Build and maintain a workplan and timeline for each collaboration, with milestones, owners, and dependencies, and keep them current as work progresses.

•Run the stand-up and partner check-in cadence: set agendas, capture decisions and actions, and track every action to closure.

•Track deliverables, agreements, material transfers, and spend against plan, and follow up on open items with legal, procurement, finance, and technical teams.

Program and partnership execution

•Build and maintain integrated plans, milestones, and dependencies for active partnerships, from kickoff through completion of collaborations.

•Run working-level cadences with external partner teams and, where appropriate, internal partner project managers; surface risks, slips, and decisions needed before they become escalations.

•Coordinate cross-functional inputs and keep agreements and material transfers moving without silent slippage.

Portfolio metrics and reporting

•Build dashboards with AI: active evaluations by stage, cycle time to decision, partnership milestone status, and external spend against budget.

•Quantify outcomes (decisions enabled, time saved, deals advanced) so results are documented as they happen.

Basic Qualifications:

•Earned Bachelor's degree in a scientific or engineering discipline

•6 years of project or program management in pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, or combination product settings.

•Scientific and technical fluency in drug delivery or a closely related area: able to follow a technical discussion and be credible with scientists and partner teams.

•Strong written communication: can turn various inputs into a concise, business-impact-focused executive updates.

•Highly skilled with AI to build tools for synthesis, tracking, and reporting (i.e. Copilot, Claude, Cowork Agent).

•Sound judgment on what to escalate, and comfortable working with ambiguity and shifting priorities.

•Discretion with confidential partners and deal information.

Additional Preferences:

•Earned Master's degree in a scientific or engineering discipline

•Track record managing multi-party programs with a variety of stakeholders, including managing timelines, risks, and dependencies across legal, IP, quality, and technical teams.

•Experience with budgeting, forecasting, resource management and other operational/business planning activities.

•Experience in business development, alliance management, or external innovation and scouting.

•Experience with deal mechanics such as material transfer agreements, evaluation agreements, and collaboration milestones.

•Proactive, self-directed follow-through with minimal oversight.

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

$150,000 - $220,000

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.

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