Lead AI Engineer (Agentic Systems)

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

At Roche, we believe the next frontier of healthcare innovation hinges on our ability to effectively connect, orchestrate, and leverage our global Clinical and Commercial Intelligence. Generative AI has moved beyond simple chat interfaces; we are building an enterprise-wide ecosystem of autonomous, reasoning, and self-improving agents to solve unprecedented challenges in the Diagnostics Commercial space.

As the Lead AI Engineer, you will serve as the principal technical authority and strategic catalyst for our next-generation AI architecture. This is a high-impact, senior-level role demanding both technical excellence and strategic leadership. You will define the global blueprint for how multi-agent systems interact, orchestrate complex workflows, connect with legacy enterprise data, and execute autonomous decisions safely. Your leadership will directly transform Roche Diagnostics' commercial agility, pricing modeling, market-access strategies, and international customer engagement frameworks.

The Opportunity

• Define the Enterprise Blueprint: Act as the chief architect and technical visionary for Roche’s Commercial GenAI platform strategy. Design the core multi-agent orchestration blueprints, common state-management protocols, and shared tool-use boundaries across the global diagnostics enterprise.

• Drive Cutting-Edge R&D to Production: Lead the technical evaluation and strategic adoption of emerging agentic paradigms (e.g., hierarchical multi-agent teams, reflection loops, knowledge semantic models, and complex orchestration architectures using frameworks like LangGraph, AutoGen, or custom orchestrators).

• Champion Engineering Excellence & Governance: Establish rigorous enterprise-level standards for LLMOps and Agent-Ops. Define global frameworks for agentic benchmarking, fallback mechanics, semantic caching, automated cost containment, and guardrailing to prevent runaway autonomous loops.

• Act as a Catalyst Partner: Work hand-in-hand with senior business executives, global product heads, and legal/compliance councils to transform multi-million dollar business problems into robust, highly compliant, agent-driven software realities.

• Mentor and Upskill: Cultivate a world-class community of practice. While you may not have traditional direct HR reports initially, you will exert significant influence through matrixed leadership, mentoring senior developers and AI engineers across our global digital hubs.

Who You Are

You are a seasoned software architect and a pioneer in the AI engineering space. You possess a unique blend of deep technical mastery, architectural pragmatism, and executive-level communication skills. You thrive when translating ambiguous enterprise challenges into deterministic, scalable software systems, and you are passionately driven by the opportunity to apply AI to a business that saves lives.

Education & Qualifications:

• Postgraduate degree (Master’s or Ph.D. preferred) in Computer Science, Software Engineering, AI/Machine Learning, or an equivalent technical field.

Technical Experience & Capabilities:

• Senior Engineering Track Record: 8+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, including at least 3+ years specifically architecting, deploying, and scaling complex Generative AI and LLM workflows in enterprise production environments.

• Orchestration Expertise: Deep, production-tested experience with state-management in agentic networks (e.g., building directed acyclic graphs for LLM reasoning, handling agent-to-agent negotiation loops, and implementing persistent cognitive memory).

• System Design & Security: Outstanding expertise in microservices architecture, secure API orchestration, semantic routing, and cloud-native scaling (AWS/Azure/GCP). Highly proficient in advanced vector search, graph databases (e.g., Neo4j), and hybrid retrieval mechanisms.

• Rigorous Evaluation Mindset: Proven track record of designing custom evaluation frameworks for non-deterministic AI systems, balancing tradeoffs between latency, execution cost, token limits, and reasoning accuracy.

• Regulated Industry Acumen: Prior experience designing automated systems within highly regulated frameworks (Healthcare, Finance, or Aerospace) is highly desirable. An intimate understanding of AI safety, algorithmic bias mitigation, and data privacy compliance is required.

• Influential Leadership: Exceptional ability to influence without formal authority, present complex technical roadmaps to non-technical C-suite stakeholders, and drive alignment across cross-functional matrix organizations.

What We Offer

At Roche, we foster an environment built on trust, psychological safety, and radical innovation. We offer an executive-level total rewards package, including highly competitive base compensation, performance-driven bonuses, comprehensive health and wellness benefits, flexible executive hybrid work arrangements, and the profound satisfaction of steering the digital transformation of a global healthcare leader.

Roche is an equal opportunity employer and strictly prohibits unlawful discrimination.

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.