Principal Machine Learning Engineer

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

Advances in AI, data, and computational sciences are transforming drug discovery and development. Roche’s Research and Early Development organisations at Genentech (gRED) and Pharma (pRED) have demonstrated how these technologies accelerate R&D, leveraging data and novel computational models to drive impact. Seamless data sharing and access to models across gRED and pRED are essential to maximising these opportunities. The new Computational Sciences Center of Excellence (CoE) is a strategic, unified group whose goal is to harness this transformative power of data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist our scientists in both pRED and gRED to deliver more innovative and transformative medicines for patients worldwide.

Within the CoE organisation, the Data and Digital Catalyst (DDC) organisation drives the modernisation of our computational and data ecosystems and integration of digital technologies across Research and Early Development to enable our stakeholders, power data-driven science and accelerate decision-making.

The Engineering - AI Enablement group within DDC is accountable for… enabling AI! We do this across the board with our scientific and computational partners based on their goals.  We help embed our AI strategy across our research organisations by providing employees with the tools and support needed to adopt AI into our daily work—helping us work smarter and enhancing our day-to-day work.  We also build and deploy AI-based solutions that reshape and transform business processes to unlock value at scale and optimise workflows.   We also work on scaling up model training and inference, evaluating the quality of AI/ML models and output, and building impactful applications which accelerate the scientists doing the critical work of drug discovery and development.  Partnering with colleagues to build, deploy and evolve a modern tech stack and utilities to enable our AI/ML and agentic efforts will be a key foundation to our success.  Our aim is for everyone who can benefit from AI/ML to be able to leverage that utility where and when they need it, from data analysis to literature search to documentation writing. We are aiming for AI/ML to be an everyday utility. The team is cross-functional, impact-driven, independent, and constantly evolving to meet the scientific needs.

The Opportunity

As a machine learning engineer in AI Enablement, you will be working closely with folks that span the gamut from Computational Scientists, Research Scientists, AI/ML experts, Product leaders, DevOps, and everyone in between. You'll build, own, and constantly improve scalable AI/ML-based systems that unlock the potential of our diverse scientific data, accelerating the discovery and development of life-changing treatments for patients.

• Design, develop, and test robust, scalable, and maintainable AI/ML facing scientific web applications and backend systems.

• Build tools to evaluate AI/ML model performance and establish new ways to understand AI quality.

• Partner with product managers and scientists to understand user needs, shape requirements, and translate them into actionable technical specifications.

• Develop and maintain systems for collecting, structuring, and storing diverse scientific data that support advanced analytics, machine learning, and other data-driven initiatives.

• Implement, adopt, or evaluate new AI/ML algorithms and analytical techniques 

• Contribute to architectural decisions, code reviews, and the evolution of our development processes.

• Be willing to span the stack and contribute where needed, even outside of your core area of expertise.

• Stay up-to-date with emerging technologies and industry best practices and adopt a culture of continuous learning, collaboration, and curiosity.

Who You Are

• You possess a Master’s or PhD in Computer Science or a similar technical field (or equivalent experience) and bring 5+ years of professional experience in machine learning engineering roles.

• You maintain expert knowledge of statistics, machine learning theory, and algorithms, alongside a strong proficiency with various AI/ML frameworks, libraries, and toolsets.

• You have direct experience with Dagster and Kubeflow, coupled with a deep understanding of ML performance optimisation and GPU best practices.

• You demonstrate experience with Kubernetes, relational/NoSQL databases, or data lakes and have worked extensively on cloud-native architectures in public clouds, ideally AWS.

• You apply proven engineering best practices while using your excellent communication skills to build trusted partnerships and your passion for learning to quickly acquire new technologies.

• You ideally offer experience with imaging or biological data, research environments, workflow automation, and specialised areas like GenAI or agents.

This position requires on-site work 3 days per week.

Unwavering focus, collaborative teamwork and exceptional delivery are key behaviours that drive our mission of doing now what patients need next. Together, we can be transformative.

If you are passionate about contributing to a committed team and have the dedication to partnership and innovation, Roche is the place for you! 

Every role at Roche plays a part in making a difference in patients’ lives. 

Apply now and join us in making an impact!  

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.