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.
About Lilly
At Lilly, we unite caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. As a global healthcare leader headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our employees work to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, advance the understanding and management of disease, and strengthen our communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. We put people first and bring our best to everything we do.
Role Overview
The Senior Director, QMS Core Quality Governance is a critical leadership role within Global Quality Systems (GQS). This leader will oversee a team of 6–10 direct reports, including Global Process Owners and key process leads responsible for Core Quality processes.
This role ensures health, capability, and continuous evolution of the Core Quality processes that underpin the QMS Framework. It also drives expansion into governance and ongoing improvement of Quality-owned processes beyond the core set—strengthening the Quality Governance pillar across the enterprise.
The Senior Director is accountable for:
- Sustaining process health and capability
- Embedding strong governance and standardized reporting
- Ensuring processes remain compliant, scalable, and aligned with corporate and regulatory expectations
This role is central to defining and shaping the future state of the QMS' Quality Governance pillar.
Key Responsibilities
Leadership & Team Management
- Lead and develop a team of 6–10 GPOs and process leaders, building deep capability and ensuring strong ownership of Core Quality processes.
- Mentor and grow the GPO community to enhance process expertise, collaboration, and execution excellence.
QMS Governance & Process Health
- Provide direct oversight of Core Quality processes and partner with owners of extended Quality-owned and non-Quality-owned processes across the QMS.
- Ensure processes are healthy, scalable, and consistently executed across the enterprise.
- Partner with Management Review to design a sustainable model for measuring and monitoring the health of the QMS process ecosystem.
- Implement governance structures that drive effective prioritization, timely decision-making, and ease of execution across the QMS.
Enterprise Engagement & Integration
- Collaborate with manufacturing, external suppliers, affiliate quality, R&D, and cross-functional partners to align and integrate enterprise-level processes.
- Ensure Global Standards, processes, training, and tools remain aligned with regulatory requirements, industry expectations, and Lilly policies.
- Partner with document owners to evaluate risks associated with document or process changes and develop mitigation strategies.
Performance, Metrics & Continuous Improvement
- Define global effectiveness and efficiency measures to assess end-to-end QMS performance and build enterprise capability.
- Monitor and report process performance, extracting insights that inform decision-making and continuous improvement.
- Drive simplification, consistency, and capability across the QMS through standardization and adoption of best practices.
Basic Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry within quality, operations, R&D, or manufacturing.
- Demonstrated leadership of a team of Quality professionals, with a track record of building capability and driving high performance.
- Proven ability to design and deliver Quality strategies balancing standardized and phase-appropriate approaches.
- Bachelor’s degree in Natural Science, Engineering, Pharmacy, or related field.
Additional Skills & Preferences
- Experience leading global or multi-site transformation or improvement initiatives.
- Strong strategic thinker with the ability to execute and balance competing priorities.
- Skilled at analyzing complex data to drive decisions and improvements.
- Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity and change.
- Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills; able to influence across all levels and in matrixed environments.
- Proven success developing scalable, globally relevant processes.
- Strong leadership instincts to make informed decisions balancing speed, quality, and risk.
- Experience establishing governance frameworks and proactively managing regulatory and quality risks.
- Deep understanding of global regulatory requirements and QMS frameworks.
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
$156,000 - $253,000
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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