The Position
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, robotics, and laboratory automation are transforming drug discovery and development. The Roche Autonomous Lab Accelerator brings together gRED, pRED, PT, and the Computational Sciences Center of Excellence (CS CoE) to build closed-loop Lab-in-the-Loop capabilities that connect scientific intent, digital design, experimental execution, and high-quality data generation.
The Opportunity
The Global Head, Autonomous Platform Strategy & Portfolio will turn the autonomous-lab vision into a prioritized portfolio of capabilities and scientific use cases. Bridge the gap between cutting-edge technology and R&D experimental labs by turning the autonomous-lab vision into a rigorously prioritized portfolio of capabilities and scientific use cases. Serving as the empowered portfolio strategy leader/ executive, you will ensure that capital investments and technological advancements translate directly into accelerated scientific impact for the organization.
In this role, you will:
Core Strategic Responsibilities
Roadmap & Vision: Define, maintain, and champion the multi-year strategic platform roadmap, ensuring alignment with overarching corporate scientific goals and drug discovery pipelines.
Investment & Business Case Development: Formulate robust business cases to justify capital allocation, prioritizing technology investments based on projected ROI, scientific impact, and time-to-value.
Build vs. Buy Strategy: Systematically evaluate and identify which scientific & technology workflows, hardware, and software capabilities should be externally sourced versus internally developed to optimize for speed, cost, and competitive advantage. Set the decision framework for what Roche builds, co-develops, permits/licenses or acquires.
Identify what to externally source versus internally develop/ customize workflows.
Track capability maturity across chemistry, biology, DMPK, protein sciences, etc.
Strategic Benchmarking: Continuously benchmark external autonomous-science developments, keeping the organization ahead of industry trends in AI, robotics, and next-generation lab automation.
Vendor & Partner Ecosystem: Define the partner and vendor strategy, identifying key external players for strategic collaborations and negotiating high-level co-development initiatives.
External communications and presence: Represent the Roche autonomous lab as a senior leader in the scientific and technology community with credibility and presence.
Leadership & Portfolio Management
Cross-Domain Maturity Tracking: Monitor and drive the capability maturity of automated workflows across diverse scientific disciplines, including chemistry, biology, DMPK, protein sciences, etc.
Team Leadership: Direct, mentor, and align a high-performing team of Product Managers and Technical Program Managers, ensuring seamless execution across the entire autonomous platform portfolio.
Annual Strategic Planning: Lead the annual strategic planning process for the autonomous platform, coordinating closely with executive leadership to secure and allocate capital budgets.
Co-Development Oversight: Manage external strategic collaborations, ensuring that co-development partnerships consistently deliver on integrated scientific and technical milestones.
Scientific Change Management: Autonomous lab platforms fundamentally shift how bench scientists work. Explicitly requiring experience in driving behavioral adoption, user experience (UX), and overcoming cultural resistance in scientific organizations is critical.
Who you are:
Experience: 10+ years of progressive leadership at the intersection of life sciences, technology, and portfolio strategy in a Pharma/Biotech environment.
Domain…