Senior Software Engineer - Lab Automation

About the role

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.

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. Seamless data sharing and access to models across gRED and pRED are essential to maximizing these opportunities.

The new Computational Sciences Center of Excellence (CoE) is a strategic, unified group whose goal is to harness this transformative power of data and Artificial Intelligence to assist our scientists to deliver more innovative and transformative medicines for patients worldwide.

The Opportunity

Within the CoE organization, the Data and Digital Catalyst (DDC) organization drives the modernization of our computational and data ecosystems and integration of digital technologies across Research and Early Development to enable our stakeholders, power data-driven science and accelerate decision-making.

As a software engineer, you will bridge the gap between scientific workflows and modern software solutions, which may include working alongside laboratory scientists and automation systems. Working with a dedicated team of software-focused engineers, you will build, test, and deploy software and systems to support experimental and data workflows in production.

In this role, you will

• Build across the full stack. Design, develop, deploy, and operate software spanning modern web frontends, backend services, APIs, databases, and cloud infrastructure.
• Create software scientists love to use. Develop intuitive applications that help researchers manage samples and data, coordinate workflows, and design, execute, monitor, and analyze experiments.
• Practice AI-native software engineering. Use coding agents as an integral part of your development workflow, accelerating implementation, testing, debugging, refactoring, and documentation while maintaining high standards of quality.
• Own complete solutions. Take features and systems from ambiguous requirements through technical design, implementation, validation, deployment, and production support.
• Build reliable and scalable systems. Design data models, services, and integrations that support complex scientific workflows and connect with laboratory and enterprise systems.
• Work across teams and disciplines. Contribute to different products and engineering teams as priorities evolve, partnering with scientists, automation engineers, designers, and other software engineers to turn complex scientific challenges into effective software solutions.
• Continuously improve how we engineer. Help shape our technical architecture, development practices, and adoption of emerging tools and technologies.

Who You Are

• You have 5+ years of experience and a strong track record of designing, shipping, and maintaining high-quality production software.
• You're a software generalist who is comfortable working across frontend, backend, databases, and cloud infrastructure, with deep expertise in at least one area.
• You have hands-on experience with modern web development, particularly React and TypeScript, along with Python, SQL, and cloud-based services (ideally AWS).
• You are an AI-native software engineer who routinely uses coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, or comparable tools for substantial engineering work. You've developed effective practices for providing context, decomposing problems, directing agents, reviewing their work, and validating results. You understand the limitations of AI-generated code.
• You have experience creating and evaluating AI agents used within applications, including designing robust evals to measure agent performance and reliability.
• You have strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, automated testing, version control, CI/CD, debugging, and production operations.
• You communicate clearly, collaborate effectively, and enjoy working directly with users to understand problems and deliver useful solutions.
• You have a bachelor's degree in computer science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred but Not Required

• Experience integrating software with laboratory instruments, robotic systems, or other physical hardware.
• Experience developing software for scientific research, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, or other data-intensive technical environments.
• Familiarity with laboratory workflows, laboratory information management systems (LIMS), electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs), or scientific data management.

Benefits

Relocation benefits are not available for this opportunity:

• The expected salary range for this position based on the primary location of San Francisco is $142,500 - 264,700 of hiring range.
• Actual pay will be determined based on experience, qualifications, geographic location, and other job-related factors permitted by law.
• 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.

Benefits

• #ComputationCoE
• #tech4lifeComputationalScience
• If you have a disability and need an accommodation in relation to the online application process, please contact us by completing this form Accommodations for Applicants.