Freelance Data Pipeline Engineer Jobs in Indiana

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.

Lilly is seeking a highly motivated and skilled Data Engineer to join our innovative team at Eli Lilly and Company. This role involves designing, building, and maintaining robust and scalable data pipelines and infrastructure to support our critical scientific and business initiatives, ultimately contributing to the discovery and development of life-changing medicines.
What You Will Do:

Data Engineering & Pipeline Development

Design, develop, and optimize scalable data pipelines using Databricks, PySpark, Python, SQL, and Delta Lake to ingest, transform, and load data from diverse sources into data warehouses and data lakes.

Build scalable, efficient Databricks pipelines implementing canonical data models across the medallion architecture (Bronze Silver Gold), scoped entirely within the CE trust boundary.

Evaluate and apply Databricks capabilities and integration patterns - Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Databricks Workflows, serverless compute, Lakebase, and ingestion connectors - selecting the right tool for each pipeline given performance, cost, and scalability constraints.

Implement and maintain ELT/ETL workflows using Databricks Workflows, Auto Loader, Structured Streaming, and Delta Live Tables (DLT).

Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Git-based promotion dev test prod) for CE data, contract, policy, and agent artifacts.

Automate data ingestion and product creation to reduce manual pipeline maintenance and onboarding time for new CE data sources.

Data Governance, Quality & Security

Implement and manage data governance policies, ensuring data quality, integrity, security, and compliance with regulatory requirements (e.g., GxP, HIPAA) and covered-entity constructs.

Implement row/column-level security, masking, and tokenization boundaries so PHI isolation is enforced at the platform layer, in partnership with the Policy-as-Code Engineer's OPA/Rego policies.

Support implementation of data governance capabilities including metadata management, lineage, and access control using Unity Catalog.

Establish and implement data quality, testing, and validation methodology (pytest, DLT/Great Expectations); build monitoring and alerting to proactively catch and resolve pipeline and data issues.

Data Modeling & Architecture

Develop and maintain data models, schemas, and metadata for efficient data storage and retrieval.

Design data solutions following Lakehouse and Medallion Architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold) design principles.

Develop reusable data transformation frameworks and automated data quality checks.

Partner with the CE Data Architect on reference architecture and patterns, providing implementation feedback that keeps designs buildable and performant at scale.

Develop and maintain documentation for data architecture, pipelines, and processes.

Collaboration & Innovation

Collaborate with data scientists, analysts, architects, and business stakeholders to understand data requirements and translate them into scalable technical solutions.

Monitor data pipeline performance, troubleshoot issues, and implement solutions to ensure high availability and reliability.

Participate in code reviews, contribute to architectural discussions, and promote best practices in data engineering.

Evaluate and recommend new data technologies and tools to enhance the enterprise data platform capabilities.

Support the integration of machine learning models, AI Skills, and analytical tools into production environments - ensuring PHI classification and consent travel with the data into agentic consumption paths.

Participate in Agile ceremonies, sprint planning, and testing activities using Jira or equivalent tooling.

Your Minimum Basic Qualifications:
* At least a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related quantitative field.
* 5+ years of experience in data engineering, ETL development, or a similar role.
* Proficiency in SQL and at least one programming language (e.g., Python, Java, hands-on Databricks).
* Experience with cloud data platforms (e.g., Databricks, AWS, Azure, GCP) and their associated data services (e.g., S3, Redshift, Snowflake, Azure Data Lake Storage, BigQuery).
* Proficiency with Git-based CI/CD workflows (Git Actions or equivalent) for versioned data and pipeline artifacts.

Qualified applicants must be authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis now and in the future. 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.

What You Should Bring:

* Excellent problem-solving skills; ability to translate architectural designs into working, tested pipelines.

* Good communication and collaboration skills - able to work effectively with architects, product owners, and multi-functional partners.

* Prior experience in the pharmaceutical or life sciences industry is preferred.

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

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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