Senior​/Principal Machine Learning Scientist, Scientific Reasoning Models, AI Drug Discovery

Position

Senior or Principal Machine Learning Scientist – Foundation Models team within Prescient Design (gRED), Roche’s AI for Drug Discovery (AIDD).

• Lead design and evolution of scientific reasoning systems; set technical direction for model architectures, training strategies, and evaluation methods.
• Define and execute approaches to improve model performance on scientific tasks, including long‑horizon reasoning and complex decision‑making.
• Translate biological and chemical domain knowledge into machine learning objectives, training signals and evaluation criteria, working closely with domain experts.
• Architect and improve large‑scale distributed machine learning systems, ensuring robustness, efficiency and reproducibility across training and evaluation workflows.
• Partner with researchers and cross‑functional teams to move models from research prototypes to production‑ready systems that support active discovery programs.
• Own end‑to‑end integrity of large‑scale training runs, from data orchestration to benchmark development.
• Mentor junior staff and interns, fostering engineering excellence and rapid experimentation.
• Define long‑term technical roadmap, identify new opportunities and set priorities across initiatives.
• Architect new initiatives that integrate diverse data modalities, guiding technical direction of cross‑functional projects across gRED.
• Serve as key technical authority for leadership, influencing how Genentech leverages generative AI to solve high‑stakes problems in the therapeutic pipeline.

• PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics or related quantitative field.
• For Senior (SE6): 0‑2+ years industry or post‑doc experience focusing on deep learning.
• For Principal (SE7): 5+ years industry or post‑PhD experience with demonstrated track record of technical leadership and project ownership.
• Extensive experience developing and training large‑scale ML models, including approaches to improve domain understanding, reasoning capabilities and model alignment.
• Strong publication record at top‑tier venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML).
• Strong software engineering skills; experience designing and operating large‑scale or high‑performance ML systems.
• Preferred: experience with molecular modalities (protein sequences, chemical graphs, structured molecular data).
• Public portfolio of research or significant contributions to open‑source ML libraries.
• Passion for applying frontier AI to drug discovery.

Salary ranges vary by location and level:
Senior: $167,400–310,800 in San Francisco; $160,100–297,300 in New York City.
Principal: $194,000–360,400 in San Francisco; $185,600–344,600 in New York City.
Payment includes base salary, discretionary annual bonus and benefits as described.

Relocation benefits are NOT available for this posting.

Genentech is an equal‑opportunity employer. We are committed to employing, promoting and treating all employees and applicants fairly based on merit, qualifications and competence. Our policies prohibit unlawful discrimination.