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The Position

Senior Principal Data Scientist 

The recent Deep Learning (DL) and AI Revolution has provided Roche with tremendous opportunities to expedite the realization of the Pharma 2030 Vision. The Product Development (PD) Digital Strategy and Enablement (DSE) team at Roche is seeking a highly talented digital enablement technical expert with in-depth AI experience for clinical development. The activities of DSE span multiple therapeutic areas, a wide range of data modalities, and collaborations with a variety of experts, all aiming to develop innovative healthcare solutions for patients and society. With subject matter expertise and technological savviness, you will be a technical leader implementing highly impactful digital enablement solutions applying AI to our business processes.

The opportunity:

Your primary responsibility will be to drive the technical directions and ensure strong business impacts. You will need to have the most updated knowledge of cutting-edge technologies and their applications in R&D. You will maintain a deep contextual knowledge of the business and technical domains, gaining insights from understanding both the working processes and needs of our business functions across PD, identifying opportunities to leverage and scale explorative efforts from one area to others. Additionally, you will stay current with pharma and tech industry trends and introduce emerging technologies that would benefit our business to our organization.

• You will translate business needs into technical requirements and user stories to ensure the delivery of user-friendly, impactful digital solutions.

• You will define the product concept, design the development strategy, and evaluate both internal development feasibility and external acquisition opportunities.

• You will provide technical leadership within and external to DSE, including AI industry landscape, ways of working, best practices, engineering, and analytics methodology.

• You will collaborate with global teams to design and implement analytics technologies, tools, and processes that enable value-creating solutions to simplify business operations.

• You will stay current with and adopt emergent AI and digital technologies, analytical methodologies, tools, and applications to ensure fit-for-purpose and impactful approaches.

• You will drive to achieve results, demonstrate curiosity and the ability to learn new things, show initiative, welcome problems as challenges, and deliver solutions to technical problems.

Who you are:

• You have a PhD in a quantitative field (e.g., mathematics, statistics, computer science, EE, etc.), and/or advanced Life Sciences degree with significant computational experience, or equivalent, with 7+ years working experience in Data Science.

• You are experienced in end-to-end data and AI product lifecycle, building business cases, technical requirements, solution architecture, data engineering pipeline, computing/storage resource management, model development/evaluation, productization, and maintenance.

• You are experienced in Machine Learning/Deep Learning algorithms e.g., Transformer/CNN/RNN & frameworks e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, multiple data modalities e.g., relational DB, images, free-form texts, and have hands-on experience in NLP, software development, programming, and using clustered compute environments on-premise or in the cloud. Proficiency with productivity toolchains such as JIRA and enterprise Git is a plus.

• You understand clinical development processes, scientific, clinical, operational, and organizational data life cycles, and the digital landscape in the Pharma/biotech industry.

• You have a sustained record of leading project teams to deliver in multiple areas and a track record of establishing successful internal collaborations and managing external technical vendors.

• You possess excellent written/verbal communication skills and demonstrate an entrepreneurial mindset and self-direction. You have the ability to teach others and a willingness to learn new techniques.

Who we are

At Roche, more than 100,000 people across 100 countries are pushing back the frontiers of healthcare. Working together, we’ve become one of the world’s leading research-focused healthcare groups. Our success is built on innovation, curiosity and diversity.

Basel is the headquarters of the Roche Group and one of its most important centres of pharmaceutical research. Over 10,700 employees from over 100 countries come together at our Basel/Kaiseraugst site, which is one of Roche`s largest sites. Read more.

Besides extensive development and training opportunities, we offer flexible working options, 18 weeks of maternity leave and 10 weeks of gender independent partnership leave. Our employees also benefit from multiple services on site such as child-care facilities, medical services, restaurants and cafeterias, as well as various employee events.

We believe in the power of diversity and inclusion, and strive to identify and create opportunities that enable all people to bring their unique selves to Roche.

Roche is an Equal Opportunity Employer.