Platform Head, Roche Cell and Organoid Biorepository (RoCOB)

At Roche you can show up as yourself, embraced for the unique qualities you bring. Our culture encourages personal expression, open dialogue, and genuine connections,  where you are valued, accepted and respected for who you are, allowing you to thrive both personally and professionally. This is how we aim to prevent, stop and cure diseases and ensure everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Join Roche, where every voice matters.

The Position

In Roche’s Pharmaceutical Research and Early Development organisation (pRED), we make transformative medicines for patients in order to tackle some of the world’s toughest unmet healthcare needs. At pRED, we are united by our mission to transform science into medicines. Together, we create a culture defined by curiosity, responsibility, and humility, where our talented people are empowered and inspired to bring forward extraordinary life-changing innovation at speed.

Strategy, Portfolio & Operations (SPO) is a unified function that serves as the strategic and operational backbone enabling pRED's strategy from lab to clinic. Operating under a dynamic Chapter Model, SPO centralises specialised skills across critical areas including Sites & Lab Services, Program & Project Management, Strategy, Clinical Operations, External Operations, Capability Development, Core Lab Technology Platforms (360 Labs) and Asset Team Leadership. SPO’s mission is to drive enterprise value creation by delivering operational excellence and accelerating portfolio productivity. As a trusted partner, SPO fosters a culture of collaboration and accountability to ensure pRED transitions assets smoothly from early research to late-stage development.

360 Labs Chapter at a Glance - The primary mission of the 360 Labs Chapter within SPO is to provide greater access and support for the use of cutting-edge biomedical research technologies by scientists across our discovery portfolio. 360 Labs delivers core scientific technologies, expertise and enabling activities, as well as facilitating knowledge sharing in close collaboration with our therapeutic areas and functions. Our ambition is to bring to life a thriving workplace environment, where your collaborative mindset is as valued as your professional expertise. Our goal is to act as a highly integrated ecosystem, supporting research and development, working collaboratively, and focused on fostering excellence and sustainability. Together, these efforts will serve to increase the speed, enhance the robustness and improve the sustainability of our exploratory research and early discovery activities.

The Opportunity

We are offering a unique opportunity for a highly motivated, engaged, and visionary individual to lead our Roche Cell and Organoid Biorepository (RoCOB) within 360 Labs. You will have an exceptional background in cell biology and biochemistry with extensive hands-on experience in the culture, expansion, quality control and banking of cell lines (including pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs/hESCs), as well as 3D organoid assets. You will have a proven track record of engaging with senior leaders and key stakeholders within a highly dynamic, matrix organisation, and drive the evolution of the RoCOB platform supporting a diverse range of needs across exploratory research and discovery portfolio project support across the different therapeutic areas within the pRED organisation.

Your Role and Responsibilities:

• You will serve as a key member of the 360 Labs leadership team, working closely with the Global Head to refine the strategy for the RoCOB platform, which encompasses the generation, quality control (QC), large-scale cryopreservation, characterisation, and inventory management of cell lines and organoid assets.

• You will lead, mentor and develop a diverse team of scientific staff while driving operational excellence and continuous innovation, fostering a culture of accountability and scientific rigour, implementing process improvements and emerging technologies that enhance efficiency and throughput, and ensuring the team has the expertise and tools needed to maintain rigorous quality and compliance standards while executing RoCOB's strategic objectives.

• You will build and maintain strategic partnerships across pRED's therapeutic areas with discovery leaders and research teams,  as well as with other biorepositories across the Roche R&D ecosystem, to understand evolving needs, drive standardisation of processes, and position RoCOB as a trusted, high-performing resource that reliably accelerates discovery science.

Who You Are

• You possess a PhD in cell biology, developmental biology, stem cell biology, or a related life science discipline, with 10 years of professional experience in an academic setting and/or pharmaceutical industry/biotech sector, with proven effective leadership of a biobanking-focused group being highly desired.

• You have in-depth theoretical and hands-on practical knowledge of cell culture, expansion, and cryopreservation technologies, including pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs/hESCs), primary cells, 3D organoid line generation, quality control methodologies, and their application to translational research. 

• You have extensive experience in large-scale biorepository operations, inventory management, ATCC standards and best practices, human tissue procurement protocols, donor consent frameworks, and both licensing and regulatory/compliance requirements (e.g., ethical oversight, data governance).

• You also have an established track record of scientific accomplishments, documented via either publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and/or presentations at international conferences. You have a demonstrated awareness of emerging technologies and methodologies in cell banking, including automation approaches and innovative workflows that enhance operational efficiency and throughput.

In addition to your scientific expertise and critical technical skills, we are looking for candidates who are:

• Customer-focused with a drive for growth and a questioning mindset. Skilled in creative problem-solving, organisation, and implementing innovative ideas efficiently in a fast-paced research context; 

• Excellent communicators with a high fluency in English, a desire to continuously build a personal network and the ability to thrive in a dynamic, inclusive environment which gives you full accountability for your own contributions and development.

At Roche, we aim high to deliver life-changing healthcare solutions. If you’re ready to make a meaningful impact on patients and healthcare systems worldwide, this is the place for you.

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.