Lead Machine Learning Engineer

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.

As the Lead Machine Learning Engineer at Roche PTE, you will spearhead the development and deployment of machine learning models that enhance our pharmaceutical operations. You will lead a team of machine learning engineers and collaborate with data scientists, engineers, and business stakeholders to deliver innovative solutions that drive operational excellence, predictive analytics, and automation.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of scalable and maintainable machine learning models to address complex challenges in pharmaceutical manufacturing and operations, ensuring seamless integration into production environments. Collaborate with data engineers to establish robust data pipelines that effectively support model performance.

• Lead and mentor a team of machine learning engineers, fostering innovation and continuous learning. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate business needs into ML solutions, ensuring alignment with broader business objectives and strategy.

• Ensure model performance and optimization by monitoring deployed models for accuracy, efficiency, and reliability, implementing continuous retraining strategies, and leveraging advanced techniques like hyperparameter tuning, feature engineering, and model ensembling to enhance outcomes.

• Drive innovation and continuous improvement by staying current with advancements in machine learning and AI, applying new methodologies and technologies to enhance Roche PT’s operations, and leading initiatives to integrate AI-driven automation and predictive analytics into processes.

• Manage stakeholder communication by simplifying complex ML concepts for non-technical audiences, collaborating with IT/DevOps for seamless model integration, and offering thought leadership on ML applications in the pharmaceutical industry

• Apply strong coding practices, including modular and reusable code (SOLID principles), version control, testing and automation, CI/CD pipelines, thorough documentation, code reviews, and performance optimization.

Who you are:

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

• Experience:

  • 5+ years of experience in machine learning engineering, with a track record of successfully deploying models in production.

  • Proven experience leading and mentoring a team of machine learning engineers.

• Technical Skills:

  • Expertise in machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or scikit-learn.

  • In-depth knowledge of machine learning algorithms, including supervised and unsupervised models, and the ability to design, apply, and evaluate multiple or ensemble models to select the best-fit solution.

  • Experience with experiment tracking frameworks (e.g., Weights & Biases, Neptune.ai, or TensorBoard) to log and manage machine learning experiments, track model lifecycle stages (development, staging, production), and evaluate model performance metrics. Skilled in ensuring model reproducibility, version control, and experiment traceability across different environments.

  • Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, R, or Scala.

  • Experience with big data technologies (e.g., Hadoop, Spark) and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).

  • Strong understanding of data preprocessing, feature engineering, and model evaluation techniques.

• Interpersonal skills:

  • Able to demonstrate an enterprise mindset and entrepreneurial behaviors broadly across different work scenarios. Identify user needs and generate viable solutions in a creative process using innovation frameworks and tools (e.g. DesignThinking, Sprints, User Stories/Personas etc).

  • Able to communicate a compelling story and complex concepts with aspirational language that data professionals, business stakeholders and decision makers equally understand.

  • Able to explain the concept of agility, agile ways of working/thinking, key principles, values and purpose, as well as the OneRoche.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in the pharmaceutical or healthcare industry.

• Knowledge of regulatory requirements related to pharmaceutical data (e.g., GMP, FDA).

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.