ML Engineering Director, AI for Drug Discovery

Genentech • New York City, NY

1d • Onsite

About The Position

Advances in AI, data, and computational sciences are transforming drug discovery and development. Roche’s Research and Early Development organizations at Genentech (gRED) and Pharma (pRED) have demonstrated how these technologies accelerate R&D, leveraging data and novel computational models to drive impact. Data sharing and access to models across our large R&D system are essential to maximising these opportunities. The new Computational Sciences Center of Excellence (CS CoE) is a strategic, unified group whose goal is to harness the transformative power of data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist our scientists in both pRED and gRED to deliver more innovative and transformative medicines for patients worldwide. We are seeking an experienced Head of Engineering, reporting to the VP of Artificial Intelligence for Drug Discovery (AI4DD), to lead the technical development, product engineering and infrastructure for our AI for Drug Discovery (AI4DD) group. This role is central to accelerating our mission of leveraging cutting-edge machine learning and AI to transform pharmaceutical research and development. The Head of Engineering oversees all facets of AI4DD engineering including deploying high impact production applications, data engineering pipelines, and machine learning infrastructure. This is a leadership position requiring deep technical expertise in AI/ML engineering, large-scale data systems, and a passion for applying technology to complex R&D challenges.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in software, data or ML engineering, with at least 5 years in a people leadership role managing multi-disciplinary engineering teams.
• Experience in designing scalable, reliable, and cost-effective data products and computational systems and extensive hands-on experience building, scaling, and maintaining infrastructure specifically for machine learning/AI workflows (MLOps, distributed training, inference services, batch compute, containerization, infrastructure-as-code).
• Deep expertise in cloud computing environments (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure), modern data stack technologies, and languages and frameworks commonly used in ML (e.g., Python, PyTorch).
• Deep understanding of machine learning algorithms, model evaluation techniques, and the infrastructure and lifecycle of developing AI models for complex, predictive domains including LLMs (distributed fine-tuning, and high-performance inference.)

Nice To Haves

• Experience in the biotech or pharmaceutical industry, ideally with exposure to drug discovery, preclinical development, or clinical trial data.
• A strong understanding of computational biology, cheminformatics, or molecular simulation is highly desirable.
• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related quantitative field.
• Experience managing multi-site teams.

Responsibilities

• Own technical strategy and roadmap for the AI4DD engineering function, ensuring alignment with the overall research goals and pharmaceutical portfolio needs.
• Lead the ML Engineering and Infrastructure team designing, and maintaining a robust, scalable, and secure ML platforms to support machine learning model training, experimentation, deployment, and inference for frontier research.
• Align closely with other related CSCoE departments across the whole system and data value chain.
• Partner closely with our LLM and Agent research teams to optimize infrastructure for foundation model training and the orchestration of autonomous agentic workflows.
• Partner closely with our Large and Small Molecule Portfolio teams to ensure data infrastructure, resource, and product alignment for maximum acceleration of the drug discovery pipeline.
• Oversee the Data Engineering team's efforts in the architecture and development of data pipelines and data products, ensuring high-quality, traceable, and accessible data for advanced early phase R&D activities.
• Direct the Product Engineering team’s development of researcher-facing applications and tools, such as protein design interfaces and predictive modeling platforms.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a diverse team of machine learning, software, and data engineers as well as developers.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, continuous integration, robust testing, and collaborative problem-solving.
• Manage project execution, resource allocation, and budget planning for all engineering initiatives.
• Work closely with AI/ML Research Scientists, Computational Biologists, and therapeutic areas leads to translate research prototypes into production-ready systems and tools.
• Collaborate with IT and security teams to ensure engineering practices adhere to all necessary enterprise standards.

Benefits

• Relocation benefits are available for this opportunity
• A discretionary annual bonus may be available based on individual and Company performance.
• This position also qualifies for the benefits detailed at the link provided below.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director