Head of Engineering Applied AI

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The Position

The Head of RDT Applied AI Engineering, India Center is accountable for defining and executing the engineering strategy, agentic toolkit development, and organizational scaling for the Applied AI department. You will oversee multiple engineering squads, led by Technical Team Leads, focused on building robust, scalable agentic engineering solutions and toolkits. You work closely with your peer in Applied AI, the Head of Applied AI Solutions, to ensure your team's delivery fits the business problem, demonstrates value (proof-of-value) and enables the realization of high-value business outcomes through AI innovation. 

The delivery of AI solutions will happen in blended teams with the forward deployed engineers from your teams in collaboration with the business aligned teams who are accountable for the final outcome and value delivery and hence a key part of your role is to ensure that your team is embedded in a collaborative way and that your team provide cutting edge AI input and acceleration through reuse for faster and sustainable value delivery.

You will serve as a Strategic Business Partner for Applied AI Engineering to the Pharma Medicines, Pharma R&D, Diagnostics and EPIE Leadership Teams. 

Your primary objective is to  co-create, define, and drive the new Hyderabad location and teams to deliver the unified global Data & AI strategy. You will build a world-class engineering organization that delivers sustainable, secure, and compliant agentic engineering at scale, accelerating the transformation of our business through advanced automation.

Description of the area

The Applied AI Engineering function is the foundational accelerator for agentic engineering across our Software Development and AI initiatives. We focus on industrializing AI through the development of an agentic engineering practices, and the integration of AI-driven tools into the software development lifecycle. We accelerate closing the gap between proof-of-concept and production-grade services.

This leadership role focuses on the structural and strategic health of the engineering discipline, fostering a culture of excellence, high-performance, and continuous technical evolution within our multidisciplinary squads.

Job Responsibilities

• Engineering Strategy & Governance
  Define the long-term technical roadmap for Applied AI engineering. Establish global engineering standards, governance frameworks, and architectural principles to ensure applicability and scalability across all AI services.
  Partner with the AI and Data Platform Leads to influence and ensure that AI and Data Platform capabilities are evolving with the frontier engineering demands.

• Organizational Design & Scaling
  Design and build high-performing engineering squads. Lead the recruitment and professional development of Technical Team Leads and engineers. Implement organizational structures that optimize for speed, quality, and cross-functional alignment with business consulting and development teams combined from the business aligned as well as forward deployed engineering teams.

• Platform Development & AI SDLC
  Champion the implementation of Agentic SDLC and modern AI/ML engineering practices. Work closely with the AI and Data platform team to enable innersource and reusability of agentic tooling. Drive for automated SDLC incl  testing, and seamless deployment paths for AI models and applications.

• Strategic Leadership & Financial Oversight
  Manage the department's engineering budget, including infrastructure costs and vendor relationships. Collaborate with senior leadership to align engineering capacity with the highest-priority business opportunities. Act as a primary technical advisor to executive stakeholders.

• Cross-Functional Partnership
  Work in close partnership with the Head of Applied AI Use Case Consulting and Head of Applied AI Solutions to ensure agentic capabilities are integrated into the overall functions demand management process. Ensure that proof of value and delivered solutions meet the business value requirements defined by your peers.
  As part of the forward deployed engineering squads, ensure that data as well as AI solution engineering is embedded.
  The forward deployed Engineering team will work in close partnership with the Data Platform team to enable AI solutions through the use of enterprise data platforms, frameworks and capabilities for quality, reliability and scalability of data for AI.  

Qualifications

Education / Experience

• 10-15+ years of experience in software engineering and technical leadership, with a strong emphasis on AI/ML and platform engineering and agentic engineering.

• Proven track record of building and scaling large-scale engineering organizations and managing multidisciplinary technical managers.

• Expert-level understanding of cloud architecture, distributed systems, and modern SDLC automation

• Agentic AI project experience (must)

• Shipping product (must)

Leadership & Strategic Skills

• Strategic thinker with the ability to translate business goals into complex engineering structures and accelerator strategies.

• Leadership & Talent: Proven ability to lead and influence senior leaders, empowering a global team, emphasizing accountability and talent management. Must foster a culture defined by psychological safety and a strong sense of ownership.

• Exceptional executive communication skills, capable of influencing senior leadership and aligning global stakeholders.

• Cross functional influencing/ matrix leadership

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Who we are

A healthier future drives us to innovate. Together, more than 100’000 employees across the globe are dedicated to advance science, ensuring everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Our efforts result in more than 26 million people treated with our medicines and over 30 billion tests conducted using our Diagnostics products. We empower each other to explore new possibilities, foster creativity, and keep our ambitions high, so we can deliver life-changing healthcare solutions that make a global impact.

Let’s build a healthier future, together.

Roche is an Equal Opportunity Employer.