Principal Data Innovation Specialist (RWD) (San Francisco)

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 PositionA 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 Real-World & Clinical Data Strategy (RWCDS) team which drives data excellence and analytics to power enhanced decision-making and evidence-generation within Roche Product Development (PD). We develop and implement data strategies that unlock the value of clinical, operational, and real-world data to accelerate evidence generation, decision-making, and innovation across PD and beyond. By embedding FAIR principles, advancing data governance, and enabling data productization, RWCDS ensures that data is not only findable and usable, but also a driver of scientific rigor, regulatory readiness, and AI-powered transformation. Through deep partnerships with internal functions and external collaborators, we shape a future-ready data ecosystem that supports personalized healthcare and efficient drug development.The Principal Data Innovation Specialist helps identify, prototype, and scale novel methods and technologies that transform how data is used across product development. Reporting to the Data Innovation Lead, you will explore emerging capabilities such as AI, semantic integration, and knowledge graphs to unlock new use cases for clinical, real-world, and operational data. You will collaborate with scientists, engineers, product teams, and external partners to design proof-of-concepts, validate innovative solutions, and assess long-term feasibility. This role requires curiosity, strong technical grounding, and a mindset oriented toward experimentation and continuous learning.The OpportunityMulti-Agent & AI Development: Prototype, validate, and scale advanced AI capabilities, focusing heavily on multi-agent development and orchestration architectures to unlock complex use cases across product development.Core Data Engineering: Lead robust data engineering activities to design, optimize, and streamline data workflows, building scalable data pipelines that integrate unstructured, multi-modal, and unconventional data sources.Analytical Project Leadership: Drive innovation activities and lead complex analytical projects focused on exploring novel data types , automated agent-driven workflows, and knowledge graph integrations in a multi-modal environment.Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with scientists, engineers, and product teams to pilot data innovations , integrating advanced engineering pipelines and multi-agent frameworks into broader clinical development and data science workflows.Platform & Tool Creation: Drive the development of low-/no-code analytics platforms to democratize multi-modal data access and establish frameworks for the scalable evaluation, productization, and reuse of experimental data approaches.Subject Matter Expertise & Mentorship: Serve as an innovation methodology expert , guiding peers through new data modalities while mentoring junior team members on cutting-edge techniques, data tools, and agent architectures.Compliance & Data Governance: Proactively identify innovation areas via research while ensuring all engineering and AI frameworks maintain absolute compliance with data privacy and security regulations like HIPAA and GDPR.Who You AreEducational & Professional Foundation: You hold a Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field , with 6+ years of experience across data engineering, data science, or healthcare innovation settings.AI & Agent Architecture Expertise: You demonstrate proven success implementing innovation pilots , with deep practical experience in AI-driven analytics, multi-agent architectures, and the application of engineering frameworks in complex research or industry environments.Methodological Frameworks: You are highly proficient with agile development, product-thinking , and innovation lifecycle frameworks (such as Lean Startup or Design Thinking) , alongside experience evaluating new data platforms, APIs, or data partnerships.Strategic & Independent Agility: You possess exceptional critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and independent decision-making capabilities that extend across both technical engineering domains and broader strategic areas.Global Communication & Collaboration: You have excellent presentation and communication skills to explain complex technical concepts simply , thrive in a culturally diverse global workplace , and actively contribute to internal or external biomedical innovation communities.Ready for the next step? We look forward to hearing from you. Apply now to discover this exciting opportunity!Where pay transparency applies, details are provided based on the primary posting location. For this role, the primary location is Basel. If you are interested in additional locations where the role may be available, we will provide the relevant compensation details later in the hiring process.Who we areA 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.SummaryLocation: Basel; San FranciscoType: Full time