Principal Data Scientist; AI-assisted Clinical Development

Opportunity

A healthier future. It’s what drives us to innovate. To continuously advance science and ensure everyone has access to the healthcare they need today and for generations to come. Creating a world where we all have more time with the people we love. That’s what makes us Roche. This role is based in the Innovation Accelerator (IA) team, the innovation engine and connective tissue for Design, Data and Data Science innovation strategy within Product Development Data Sciences (PDD).

We translate our long‑term PDD vision into actionable strategy, shaping and prioritizing innovative cross‑functional use cases that span PDD, PD, and Pharma. As both integrators and incubators, we explore, prototype, and help productize solutions to deliver impact in close partnership with internal Roche teams and external collaborators. With a mindset rooted in openness, value creation, and adaptability, we navigate the innovation ecosystem to drive transformative impact and future readiness across the organization.

The IA Principal Data Scientist plays a pivotal role in building and deploying AI/ML‑powered digital solutions that transform how we develop medicines. You will partner closely with product managers, software engineers, and UX researchers to design, test, and scale statistical capabilities that unlock actionable insights from clinical, operational, and real‑world data. With a strong product‑thinking mindset and deep technical fluency, you will help create intelligent tools that are scalable, ethical, and built for impact in regulated healthcare environments.

• Support or lead the development and application of advanced statistical and machine learning methods for integration into tools and software products in clinical development and decision‑making support.
• Design and productize the execution of simulation studies to evaluate innovative trial designs and statistical frameworks.
• Translate complex scientific and operational considerations into software requirements that productize model development and usage, collaborating with domain experts to validate assumptions and interpret results.
• Independently drive exploratory analysis of complex clinical, biomarker, and operational data to extract insights and develop predictive models.
• Develop scalable, reproducible pipelines for data processing, model training, evaluation, and deployment in regulated environments.
• Optimize model performance, ensure algorithmic fairness, proactively mitigate bias or drift in deployed systems, and develop evaluation approaches for algorithms including generative AI (GenAI) components.
• Co‑lead the architectural design of ML and GenAI systems supporting traceability, compliance, and explainability.
• Partner with software engineering, product, UX, and science teams to integrate models into real‑world user applications.
• Contribute to scientific leadership by publishing and presenting novel methodologies in high‑impact venues, both internal and external.
• Serve as a best‑practice resource for statistical modeling strategies, code quality, and responsible AI principles.
• Lead or co‑lead cross‑functional data science efforts that impact portfolio strategy and delivery.

• Master’s or PhD in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Bioinformatics, or a related field.
• 6+ years of experience applying advanced statistical and ML techniques in biomedical, clinical, or digital health domains.
• Proven expertise in model development, simulation studies, and decision‑support frameworks.
• Strong hands‑on experience with Python or R, and ML libraries such as scikit‑learn, Tensor Flow, PyTorch, or similar.
• Track record of translating complex domain questions into robust statistical models or ML systems.
• Experience building pipelines for training, evaluating, and deploying ML solutions in production environments.
• Demonstrated expertise with real‑world data, Bayesian methods, decision theory, high‑dimensional data, or causal inference.
• Attention to detail and quality work with ability to manage and prioritize multiple projects simultaneously.
• Excellent collaboration skills, including statistical consulting…