Staff Software Engineer, TuneLab

Eli Lilly and Company is a global healthcare leader headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, focused on making life better for people around the world. They are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to help transform powerful AI models into usable products for biotech startups, owning the product end-to-end and setting technical direction.

Responsibilities:

• Own product surfaces end-to-end–frontend, backend, data, integrations–whatever the problem requires. You don’t hand off; you ship
• Architect and build the application layer that wraps Lilly’s AI models into reliable, cohesive workflows for biotech customers. Make a set of point solutions feel like a product
• Make pragmatic technology decisions. Optimize for speed and quality. Pick boring tools when they work and reach for novel only when it pays
• Stay deep in the code. This is a build role, not a review role
• Set the engineering bar from scratch–code review, testing, release process, on-call. What you build becomes the team norm
• Mentor other engineers as the team grows. Make them better at the job, not just better at this codebase
• Partner with the Engineering Manager on hiring. You’re an interviewer and a recruiter–you sell the role and you hold the bar
• Pressure-test the roadmap with the PM and design lead. You have product taste and you use it. You’ll push back when a spec is wrong and find the simpler way to ship
• Spot the things nobody owns and either pick them up or assign them clearly. The team’s gaps are your problem
• Navigate enterprise infrastructure, security, and compliance requirements without disrupting development progress
• Work with Lilly IT and internal platform teams to leverage existing capabilities rather than rebuild them
• Represent engineering in conversations with external biotech partners when it matters. You can speak credibly to a CTO on the other side

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with a track record of shipping SaaS products used by real customers
• Demonstrated experience operating as a senior or staff IC on a small team–not just as a senior IC on a large one
• Qualified applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. Lilly will not provide support for or sponsor work authorization or visas for this role, including but not limited to F-1 CPT, F-1 OPT, F-1 STEM OPT, J-1, H-1B, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, or L-1
• Strong full-stack fundamentals. You're comfortable owning a feature from database schema to UI and have an opinion about each layer
• Solid API design and integration experience. You know how to build systems that connect things cleanly
• Real frontend craft: you can design and ship interfaces that feel right, not just functional. You sweat the empty states and the error states
• Cloud experience and comfort with modern deployment practices
• Enough familiarity with AI/ML to make good integration decisions. You don't need to be a data scientist, but you need to understand what you're wrapping and why it matters
• Always learning. You want the why behind an ask, not just the what, and you don't let momentum decide a solution for you
• Hands-on experience building LLM-powered features. You understand the practical challenges: reliability, evals, context management, and when not to use AI
• Comfortable with AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.). You know how to get the most out of them
• You think about the user, not just the system. You've built software that external customers actually paid for and relied on
• You've simplified complex backend capabilities into clean, usable product experiences
• You ask 'what problem are we solving?' before 'how do we build it?'
• You can hold your own with a PM on what we should build, not just how to build it
• Focused on delivering business value, not just shipping features. You'll work directly with internal stakeholders and customers when it helps the team
• You've worked in environments where the roadmap wasn't fully defined and the team was small, and you thrived
• Self-sufficient. You unblock yourself and figure things out
• You create structure and process when needed, but you know when to skip it
• You take ownership broadly. If something isn't working, you fix it rather than wait for someone else
• Startup experience matters here more than big-tech tenure
• You lead with judgment. You don't need a manager title to set direction
• Low ego, high standards. You'll learn from a more junior engineer who knows the area better, and you'll push back firmly when you don't agree
• You communicate clearly across technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience in life sciences, pharma, or health tech
• Background building B2B SaaS products
• Prior experience at a startup, or as an early engineer in an internal startup within a larger company
• Experience as a technical co-founder or one of the first engineers on a product that found users