Global AI Engineering Lead

Roche fosters diversity, equity and inclusion, representing the communities we serve. When dealing with healthcare on a global scale, diversity is an essential ingredient to success. We believe that inclusion is key to understanding people’s varied healthcare needs. Together, we embrace individuality and share a passion for exceptional care. Join Roche, where every voice matters.

The Position

The Opportunity

At Roche, we thrive to deliver more benefits to our patients as part of our 10-year Pharma vision. An integral part of achieving this vision is to deliver new and innovative data analytics solutions to our scientists across Pharma Technical Operations (PT). To do so, we have formed a new organization called PT Digital and Operational Excellence (PTE) with the aspiration to digitally transform and become a lean organization.

PTE is the organization that catalyzes the global development and execution of PT’s Digital and Operational Excellence strategy to enable PT to realize our performance promises. We build a strong cross-functional and inclusive community, put the power of data into the hands of our people, further develop the Lean and Digital skills across PT, and scale up our Digital and Advanced Analytics solutions, for the benefit of our colleagues and patients.

We aim to activate data citizenship and a digital mind, revolutionize our FAIR data ecosystem and systems landscape, re-design excellent processes, and generate transformative insights. We collaborate closely with global functions to deliver impactful value to our patient.

Position Overview

As the Lead AI Engineer at Roche PT, you will develop and scale AI solutions, guide AI strategy, and oversee the deployment of advanced AI systems. You will lead a team, collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders, and drive the integration of AI technologies to enhance operations and decision-making.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and implement AI strategies, focusing on Generative AI and LLMs, to address complex pharmaceutical challenges. Design scalable frameworks for deploying AI models that align with Roche PT’s business goals and drive innovation.

• Lead the end-to-end development, deployment, and scaling of Generative AI solutions for tasks such as automated content generation and process optimization. Implement Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) techniques with knowledge base integration to enhance model precision and relevance. Establish automated pipelines for model monitoring, performance tuning, and scalability across distributed systems.

• Design and implement knowledge graphs to enhance data relationships and support AI-driven insights, using vector embeddings and graph databases (e.g., Neo4j, Amazon Neptune) for efficient data integration, querying, and management in large-scale AI applications.

• Lead and mentor a team of AI engineers, fostering innovation and collaboration, while working with cross-functional teams to translate business needs into effective AI solutions.

Qualifications:

• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in AI, Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field. Ph.D. is a plus.

• Experience: 5+ years in AI engineering with expertise in scaling AI solutions and developing strategies.

• Skills:

  • Proven expertise in designing and implementing Generative AI models, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) methods, for enhanced contextual accuracy and relevance in large-scale applications.

  • Hands-on experience in building and managing knowledge graphs, utilizing vector embeddings and graph databases (e.g., Neo4j, Faiss, Amazon Neptune) to enable efficient data integration, querying, and AI-driven insights.

  • Proficiency in Python, R, or Java and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).

  • Knowledgeable in utilizing orchestration frameworks such as AWS Bedrock, LangChain, and LangGraph for the seamless integration and deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs) to streamline the management of model workflows, enhance collaboration between multiple AI components, and facilitate efficient data processing pipelines, ensuring optimal performance and scalability of LLM-based applications.

• Preferred:

  • 5+ years of experience in pharmaceuticals or healthcare.

  • Knowledge of regulatory standards (e.g., FDA, GDPR).

  • Experience with MLOps and large-scale AI systems.

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.