[Hiring] Senior Director, Commercial Insights & BD Forecasting @Eli Lilly and Company

Role Description

This is not a forecast-maintenance role. We're looking for someone who builds conviction — who can walk into an unfamiliar therapeutic area, do the primary work, and produce a commercially defensible point of view where little internal precedent exists. You'll be the person in the room who has done the work and can stand behind it.

Reporting to the VP of Corporate Development and BD Strategy, you'll lead end-to-end commercial assessment for licensing, acquisition, and partnership opportunities across markets new or adjacent to Lilly's current portfolio — and build the forecasting infrastructure that raises the quality of BD analytics across the organization.

White Space Assessment & Market Intelligence

• Lead commercial assessments from early landscape scoping through full deal-stage forecasting, with a clear and defensible POV at each stage.
• Rapidly develop substantive expertise in unfamiliar therapeutic areas — synthesizing epidemiology, treatment algorithms, competitive dynamics, payer landscapes, and emerging clinical data.
• Proactively size white space opportunities before formal deal processes begin; track signals across pipelines, regulatory trends, and payer policy to anticipate where markets are heading.

Market Research Leadership

• Design and lead primary research programs (qualitative and quantitative) with physicians, payers, patients, and channel partners — especially where secondary data is thin.
• Commission and critically evaluate third-party research; translate external deliverables into actionable commercial insight.
• Build Lilly's institutional knowledge base in new markets through documented findings, assumptions, and forecast rationale that persist beyond individual deals.

Forecasting Model Development

• Build flexible, reusable forecasting models with modular architecture, shared assumptions, and clear documentation.
• Deploy approaches suited to data-scarce environments: analogue models, epidemiology-driven patient flow frameworks, expert elicitation, and scenario trees.
• Model the full commercial picture — uptake trajectories, competitive erosion, pricing and access assumptions, channel dynamics, lifecycle scenarios, and risk-adjusted probability of success.

Go-to-Market & Channel Strategy

• Evaluate innovative commercial approaches — outcomes-based contracting, risk-sharing structures, novel launch sequencing — and assess their viability in new market entries.
• Analyze channel architecture trade-offs (specialty pharmacy, buy-and-bill, direct-to-patient, GPO/IDN) and their impact on revenue, access, and deal valuation.

BD Partnership & Executive Influence

• Serve as the commercial analytics partner to BD leadership from initial screening through due diligence, term sheet development, and integration planning.
• Present forecasts to senior executives with the confidence to defend assumptions, acknowledge uncertainty honestly, and make clear recommendations — not just ranges.
• Engage directly with external counterparties and advisors during diligence, representing Lilly's commercial perspective with authority.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or advanced degree in a scientific field.
• 10+ years in pharmaceutical or biotech commercial strategy, BD analytics, market research, or strategic forecasting.

Requirements

• Master’s degree.
• Meaningful exposure beyond a single therapeutic area.
• Demonstrated track record building commercial conviction in new or ambiguous markets — not just maintaining existing forecasts.
• Experience leading primary market research: study design, vendor management, and synthesis into commercial recommendations.
• Strong financial modeling skills: bottoms-up and epidemiology-based revenue forecasting, DCF/rNPV analysis, sensitivity and scenario modeling.
• Deep understanding of how pharmaceutical markets work: treatment paradigm dynamics, prescriber behavior, payer decision-making, launch benchmarks, competitive response.
• Familiarity with innovative go-to-market models (value-based agreements, outcomes-based contracting, digital-first launch) and pharmaceutical channel architecture.
• Confident communicator who can present a supported commercial view to senior leadership and stand behind it.
• Strategy consulting or life sciences investment banking background; experience with RWE/HEOR; knowledge of FDA/EMA regulatory pathways; prior work building forecasting infrastructure across a BD organization.

Benefits

• Actual compensation will depend on a candidate’s education, experience, skills, and geographic location. The anticipated wage for this position is $169,500 - $275,000.
• Full-time equivalent employees also will be eligible for a company bonus (depending, in part, on company and individual performance).
• 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.
  • 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.