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 PositionAs Tech Lead for Application Observability, you will drive the technical strategy, architecture, and end-to-end delivery of our observability platform. You will elevate engineering standards across the organization by mentoring senior engineers, promoting architectural consistency, and ensuring our products are scalable, secure, and cost-effective throughout their lifecycle. In this role, you will balance deep technical execution with high-impact leadership—coaching team members, supporting live capabilities, and effectively negotiating priorities with cross-functional stakeholders.
Description of the area
The Digital Operations and Reliability function ensures the proactive management and maintenance of the optimal performance, reliability, and availability of all RDT enterprise-wide digital platforms and Infrastructure, minimizing disruption to business processes across the value chain, and guaranteeing compliance.
Observability Tools Engineering team plays a key part within Operational Predictive Intelligence, providing scalable Observability platforms and frameworks that empower Application and Infrastructure teams, enabling a shift from reactive firefighting to proactive engineering—accelerating developer velocity, reducing MTTR, and driving SRE adoption
Job Responsibilities
Technical Leadership & Architecture Strategy: Drive the technical vision, architectural roadmap, and high-level design for the Application Observability platform and frameworks. Ensure solution scalability, high availability, security, and cost-efficiency across the entire product lifecycle.
Observability & SRE Practice: Lead the design and deployment of enterprise-grade observability capabilities (e.g., Grafana Cloud) and telemetry frameworks. Promote Open Telemetry Standards and good practices. Drive SRE adoption across application and infrastructure teams to shift from reactive firefighting to proactive engineering, reducing MTTR and accelerating developer velocity.
DevSecOps & Platform Automation: Oversee and advance IaC principles (Terraform, Vault, Ansible), automated CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins), and containerized infrastructure (Kubernetes, multi-cloud platforms). Enforce robust DevSecOps and security practices throughout the delivery pipeline.
Engineering Excellence & Mentorship: Establish engineering standards, code quality benchmarks, and architectural consistency. Coach and mentor senior engineers and geo-distributed technical team members, fostering a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and knowledge sharing.
Cross-Functional Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement: Partner closely with the Product Owner, architects, cross-functional stakeholders, and external MSPs/vendors to negotiate priorities, translate product strategy into actionable technical specifications, and ensure alignment with organizational goals.
Governance, Compliance & Operational Resilience: Ensure all implemented technical solutions comply with quality, regulatory, and security standards (especially within healthcare/pharma domains). Support ITSM processes, participate in technical audit remediation, and contribute to Disaster Recovery and operational resilience planning.
Qualifications
Education / Experience
Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
Relevant Experience: 7+ years of hands-on experience in software development, DevOps/DevSecOps, or platform engineering, driving complex technical initiatives.
Regulated Industry Context: 2+ years of experience working in a multinational, highly regulated setting (pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or healthcare technology experience is strongly preferred).
Team Leadership: Proven track record of guiding, mentoring, and inspiring geo-distributed engineering teams through influence, collaboration, and technical expertise.
Technical Skills
Observability Solutions: Deep expertise in Application Observability tools, frameworks, and vendor solutions (e.g., Grafana Cloud, Datadog, Splunk, OpenTelemetry, LogicMonitor).
Infrastructure as Code & Cloud: Proficiency in IaC tools (Terraform Cloud, HashiCorp Vault, Ansible, Consul) and public cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
Containers & CI/CD: Hands-on experience with container platforms (Docker, Kubernetes) and modern CI/CD tooling (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins).
Software Engineering & Scripting: Sound knowledge of full software development lifecycles, source control (GitLab/GitHub), and scripting/programming languages (e.g., Python).
Architecture & Delivery: Understanding of solution, information, and process architecture, as well as Agile delivery frameworks and tools (Jira, Confluence).
Additional Qualifications
Communication: Excellent oral and written communication skills in English, with the ability to articulate complex technical decisions clearly to both technical teams and senior business leaders.
Problem-Solving & Innovation: Intellectual curiosity and strong analytical skills to solve complex delivery and architectural challenges with innovative solutions.
Enterprise Mindset: Ability to break down organizational silos, manage MSP/vendor interactions, and align technical execution with overarching business strategies.
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.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field
- 7+ years hands-on experience in software development, DevOps/DevSecOps, or platform engineering
- Proven track record leading and mentoring geo-distributed engineering teams
- Deep expertise with observability tools and standards (Grafana Cloud, Datadog, Splunk, OpenTelemetry, LogicMonitor)
- Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code and related tools (Terraform / Terraform Cloud, HashiCorp Vault, Ansible, Consul)
- Experience with public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
- Hands-on experience with containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
- Hands-on experience with CI/CD tooling (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins) and source control (GitLab/GitHub)
- Software engineering and scripting knowledge (e.g., Python) and SDLC experience
- Understanding of solution, information, and process architecture and Agile delivery (Jira, Confluence)
- Excellent oral and written communication skills in English
- 2+ years experience in a multinational, highly regulated industry (pharma/biotech/healthcare)
Roche Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Roche and has not been reviewed or approved by Roche.
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Retirement Support — U.S. materials describe a 401(k) with both matching and an additional company contribution, supported by formal plan documents and true‑up features. This structure is positioned as a standout element of the total package, particularly at Genentech.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time‑off provisions include substantial vacation, a year‑end shutdown, and a paid six‑week sabbatical after six years. These elements indicate a recharge‑oriented approach within the U.S. offering.
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Healthcare Strength — Company materials emphasize comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and mental‑health resources alongside well‑being programs. Benefits pages consistently highlight breadth across core health coverage elements.
Roche Insights
What We Do
Roche is a global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics focused on advancing science to improve people’s lives. The combined strengths of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics under one roof have made Roche the leader in personalised healthcare – a strategy that aims to fit the right treatment to each patient in the best way possible. Roche is the world’s largest biotech company, with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, immunology, infectious diseases, ophthalmology and diseases of the central nervous system. Roche is also the world leader in in vitro diagnostics and tissue-based cancer diagnostics, and a frontrunner in diabetes management. Founded in 1896, Roche continues to search for better ways to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases and make a sustainable contribution to society. The company also aims to improve patient access to medical innovations by working with all relevant stakeholders. Thirty medicines developed by Roche are included in the World Health Organization Model Lists of Essential Medicines, among them life-saving antibiotics, antimalarials and cancer medicines. Roche has been recognised as the Group Leader in sustainability within the Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnology & Life Sciences Industry ten years in a row by the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI).
