Job Description

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 Position

In Roche’s Pharmaceutical Research and Early Development organization (pRED), we make transformative medicines for patients in order to tackle some of the world’s toughest unmet healthcare needs. At pRED, we are united by our mission to transform science into medicines. Together, we create a culture defined by curiosity, responsibility, and humility, where our talented people are empowered and inspired to bring forward extraordinary life-changing innovation at speed.

Therapeutic Modalities (TMo) organization, accountable for translating disease biology into high-quality drug candidates across small molecules, large molecules, oligonucleotides, and genomic medicines. By integrating deep modality expertise with cross-disciplinary collaboration, TMo drives innovation within and across platforms to enable differentiated, sustainable therapeutic impact.

As the siRNA Design Principal Scientist, you will play a key role in designing and optimizing therapeutic siRNA against various disease targets working from Target Assessment through Lead Optimization across different disease areas. You will integrate deep scientific expertise with high quality execution of discovery programs.

The Opportunity

• Therapeutic Design Strategy: Lead the drug design strategy of oligonucleotides with a strong focus on siRNAs, leveraging computational and empirical approaches, for both initial Proof of Concept on novel targets and full-scale lead optimization for clinical development.

• Guide projects holistically ensuring early design decisions align with late-stage clinical and manufacturing requirements.

• Utilize and invent new advanced chemical modification patterns and sequence selection strategies to optimize relevant pharmacological properties of siRNAs

• AI Collaboration: Work in close partnership with our AI Experts to develop, validate, and apply the suit of AI design solutions. You understand AI needs and will provide the "ground truth" biological data and domain expertise to sharpen our machine-learning approaches.

• Cross-Functional Alignment: Act as the RNAi subject matter expert in collaboration with project teams and disease experts.

Who You Are

• Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, or a related field with 5+ years of industry experience specifically in siRNA/RNAi therapeutic design.

• Deep understanding of the RNAi mechanism and profiling of siRNA therapeutics.

• Proven track record in applying chemical modification patterns of siRNA to enhance therapeutic profile.

• Familiarity with the interface of biology and data science; comfortable discussing parameters and data features with AI engineers; hands-on experience with command-line utilities and scripting languages for biological sequence analysis and data management.

• The "Team Player" Mindset: Ability to communicate complex nucleic acid chemistry to non-experts and integrate feedback from diverse stakeholders.

• Strategic Thinking: Ability to balance aggressive development timelines with meticulous attention to detail.

• Excellent communication skills, capable of translating complex scientific concepts into clear, actionable insights for diverse audiences.

At Roche, we aim high to deliver life-changing healthcare solutions. If you’re ready to make a meaningful impact on patients and healthcare systems worldwide, this is the place for you.

Who we are

A 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.