Lead SDET
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.
About Technology @ Lilly
At Lilly, everything we do starts with patients. We unite caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our global team of over 50,000 employees work with urgency and purpose to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve. We bring our best to this work because people depend on it. If you're driven by purpose and determined to make a meaningful difference for patients, we invite you to bring your skill and your commitment to Lilly.
At Lilly, technology is not a support function. It is how a global medicine company operates, innovates, and delivers. Lilly in Bengaluru builds the capabilities that make this possible, cloud platforms, AI systems, and automation at enterprise scale, all in service of a purpose that makes this technology work genuinely distinctive, from advancing drug discovery to enabling connected clinical trials to keeping a global medicine company running at the standard patients deserve.
Organization Overview
At Lilly, we believe in the talent of our workforce. One of the best ways to utilize and develop that talent is to use our existing workforce to fill new and/or open positions. If you are looking for a new position within Lilly, you can view and apply to open roles posted in the internal job posting system. You must meet the minimum qualifications outlined in the job description and have/obtain work authorization in the country the position is to be considered. When applying internally for a position, your current supervisor will receive notification that you have applied to the position. We encourage employees to discuss the opportunity with their supervisor prior to applying.
Note: Roles are posted at the lowest level of a band, however, employees should search across all levels of the band to identify all opportunities. Employees hired on banded positions (ex: P1-P3, R1-R2, B1-B3, etc.) transfer at their current level, despite the level indicated on the job posting. For example, if a P2 candidate is selected for a P1-P3 banded position, the candidate will remain a P2 in the new role.
About the Team
At Lilly, our Test Automation Center of Excellence (TACoE) brings modern tools and practices together to improve the quality, speed, and reliability of software delivery. We embed automated testing into the core of our engineering processes — supporting innovation, reducing manual effort, and delivering sustainable value to our operations and customers within regulated healthcare and pharmaceutical environments.
The Role
Lead SDET
Department: Technology@Lilly
Location: Eli Lilly, Bengaluru
Position Type: Full-Time
Level: R3-R4
As a Lead SDET, you will shape Lilly's enterprise automation strategy and oversee the delivery of scalable, high-quality automation solutions. You will resolve complex testing challenges, lead critical framework enhancements, and modernise our automation practices so they stay aligned with business objectives.
This is a hands-on engineering role. You will write, review, and optimise automation code, contribute to framework architecture, build reusable components, and embed automation within CI/CD pipelines to enable continuous testing at scale.
What You'll Do
- Architect, design, and implement robust, maintainable automation frameworks that adapt to evolving technologies and platforms.
- Contribute directly to automation code development, debugging, refactoring, and performance optimisation, taking technical ownership of complex challenges.
- Apply software engineering principles, design patterns, and clean coding practices. Conduct code reviews and ensure automation code meets production-grade standards.
- Partner with development, DevOps, product, and business teams to integrate testing into every phase of the software development lifecycle.
- Evaluate emerging tools, AI-driven testing platforms, and industry trends to modernise testing processes and improve speed, reliability, and coverage.
- Establish metrics and KPIs to monitor automation performance, reduce manual effort, and accelerate release cycles without compromising quality.
- Define and own test strategies across enterprise-level projects, working with the Test Automation Architect to ensure platforms meet standards for stability, scalability, security, and performance.
- Mentor engineers at all career stages, sharing practical expertise and coding best practices to build SDET capability across teams.
What You'll Bring
- Substantial experience as an SDET, with a track record of building and maintaining automation frameworks for enterprise applications.
- Strong coding ability in JavaScript (required); working knowledge of Python or Pytest is a plus.
- Production-quality automation code, applying design patterns and clean code principles.
- Experience designing scalable automation frameworks from scratch and integrating them into CI/CD pipelines.
- Hands-on testing across UI and functional (Cypress, Playwright), API, performance, and BDD frameworks (Cucumber, SpecFlow); familiarity with AI-driven testing approaches.
- Breadth across testing types: functional, integration, regression, mobile, data, security, component, and UI/UX.
- Proven technical leadership — influencing strategic direction and driving implementation across multiple projects.
- Strong understanding of Agile delivery (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) and the ability to communicate technical decisions clearly to senior stakeholders.
- Familiarity with change-control processes including CAPA management (preferred for regulated environments).
- Exposure to Power BI, Splunk, or similar monitoring and reporting tools is a plus.
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
- 12+ years of experience in software testing and automation, including substantial coding experience as an SDET delivering scalable solutions across enterprise applications.
- Demonstrated technical leadership across multiple projects.
At Lilly, caring is not only what we do for patients. It is how we work. We believe the people who dedicate themselves to making medicines better deserve an environment that makes their lives better too, one where they are supported, respected, and given the space to do their best work. This is not just a policy. It is who we are.
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 () 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 does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status.
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