Senior Director, Software Engineering

The Position

We advance science so that we all have more time with the people we love.

At Genentech Research & Early Development (gRED) we have initiated an exciting journey to bring together and further strengthen our computational talent and capabilities by forming a new, central organization - gRED Computational Sciences (gCS). gCS is on a mission to partner across the organization to realize the potential of data, technology and computational approaches that will revolutionize how targets and therapeutics are discovered and developed, ultimately enabling novel treatments for patients across the world. We stand at the beginning of an exciting journey.

The Computational Catalysts group within gCS is a diverse, curious and action-driven team at the intersection of computation, engineering and science with ambition to advance our technical excellence. The focus of the team is on partnering with the informatics and scientific communities to create a computational and data ecosystem that powers scientific discovery and accelerates decision making. We aim to modernize our ability to acquire, store, link, share, find and analyze data across the organization through scalable and integrated solutions that truly make every data point count. Reporting directly to the Executive Director, Data Solutions and Engineering this Function Tech Lead will play a key role in defining and executing the strategy for the Data Fabric for this newly created group.

The Data Solutions and Engineering group within Computational Catalyst is accountable for establishing a common Data Fabric which connects our Systems, specifically our Data Pipelines and Applications for data acquisition, collection, storage, transformation, linkage and sharing. This team strives to build delightful applications and systems for our stakeholders with a strategic mindset. The team is responsible for the end to end product lifecycle management and the work done is leveraged downstream for building key scientific insights and enabling our ML/AI workflows and models. The Senior Director of Software Engineering will closely work with Software Engineers, Product Tech/ML Ops and Function Tech Leads in their role.

The Senior Director, Software Engineering is an experienced and highly credible visionary and technical leader with the proven ability to deliver, form collaborative partnerships and foster an engaging team culture built on trust. You will be responsible and accountable for designing and driving key engineering initiatives across our Data Stack. You will deeply contribute towards building common data solutions and frameworks which can be leveraged across multiple initiatives. You will contribute towards setting standards that will be adopted across Catalysts and the broader organization. You as a highly technical Software Engineering leader will lead and have a span of control over a number of outstanding data and software engineers and will work closely with and influence Product Managers, DevOps/MLOps, Function Tech Leads who are building data solutions and applications which are modern and delight the users. You are someone who has hands-on experience building data centric workflows and applications with a strong focus on user/stakeholder centricity. You will have an understanding of how to build robust, extensible and modular applications that exemplify industry best practices, minimizing manual interventions, ensuring robustness, scalability,FAIR principles and avoiding technical debt. The solutions and applications you and your team develops will be leveraged by key stakeholders from lab scientists to Bench Scientists and ML/AI engineers. You will collaborate with leaders in other parts of the Roche Group (e.g. pRED and Product Development) to identify enterprise wide opportunities and best practices. You will help break down silos between efforts and foster collaborative efforts to accelerate common and modular applications. You are passionate about learning in general and newer technologies in specific. You are skilled and passionate about mentoring and coaching on diverse topics. You will make decisions related to technical roadmaps, solutions and capability development and will be expected to make key contributions to the overall success of gCS.

The Opportunity:

• Strategic Engineering leadership for the ongoing initiatives and by identifying new opportunities with an eye for consolidation, deprecation and building common solutions

• Responsibility for hiring, promoting, retaining and developing our talent to unleash our people's potential and continuously look for opportunities for team members to broaden their knowledge, capabilities and skill sets to enable enhanced outcomes and impact

• Developing and implementing a robust, proactive and inclusive recruitment strategy to attract outstanding talent at all levels - from people managers through to early-stage software engineers

• Drive consolidation and deprecation of legacy applications and systems and reduction of tech Debt

• Responsibility for technical excellence and ensuring our solutions and capabilities are innovative, best-in-class and integrated by delivering data flows and pipelines within and across gCS, Research Biology, Drug Discovery, Translational Medicine, Development Sciences and beyond

• Identifying key trends, technologies, methodologies and influence there adoption by taking an Open Source focussed, Cloud first, API first and AI first approach

• Learn, deeply understand and ultimately improve our Data workflows and Application Architecture and ecosystem by leveraging standard patterns like layered architecture, microservices, event-driven, multi-tenancy etc

• Responsible for ensuring our technical choices are innovative, best-in-class and are inter-operable and consistent across gCS, Research Biology, Drug Discovery, Translational Medicine, Development Sciences and beyond

• Understand and influence technical decisions around data workflows and application development while working collaboratively with our key partners

• Deliver on the goal of bringing diverse sets of data together which fully enables a wide range of use cases like AI/ML, search, reporting, and analytics

• Facilitate the implementation of AI models that take advantage of advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence

• Key contributor on implementing a successful sourcing strategy and resourcing model to ensure key priorities are staffed effectively with the appropriate talent and capabilities

• Establish and foster strong internal and external partnerships and relationships with leaders and stakeholders in Computational Catalysts, gCS and beyond

• Lead by example to establish and demonstrate the culture and working environment of this new organization aligned with our gCS values: impact, collaboration, diversity, scientific excellence and curiosity

Who You Are:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or similar technical field. Master's degree or higher preferable.

• 12+ years of experience in software engineering

• 7+ years of experience managing teams and experience forming a new team

• Deep experience and technical understanding of modern software and data engineering approaches, including data flow within the cloud and cutting-edge data storage solutions

• Experience with full stack development. Working knowledge of building Front Ends using HTML/CSS, JavaScript and other Libraries and Backends using any high level languages like Python, Java.

• Working experience with Databases and Data Analytics (SQL/NoSQL, ETL, ELT), APIs (REST, GraphQL)

• Experience with building Designs for Data Applications which are highly reliable, scalable, performant, secure and robust and ideally on a public cloud platform

• Takes an Open Source, Cloud First, API First, AI First approach towards problem solving

• Experience technically leading large and complex projects, involving multiple teams and stakeholders and achieving outstanding results in a timely and efficient manner

• Experience influencing, motivating and aligning others towards common technical decisions and leverages shared ownership as appropriate.

• Highly collaborative and ability to build trusted partnerships with internal and external stakeholders

• Ability to think strategically and optimize for the long term while acting with a sense of urgency

• Cares about technical and product excellence and building highly usable solutions

• Experience reducing Tech Debt and consolidating and deprecating legacy solutions

• Acts as a mentor and coach for others

• Consistently exhibits servant leadership and a passion for teamwork and collaboration

• Strong oral and written communication skills

Relocation benefits are available for this job posting.

The expected salary range for this position based on the primary location of California is $216,100 - $401,300 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

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Genentech is an equal opportunity employer, and we embrace the increasingly diverse world around us. Genentech prohibits unlawful discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin or ancestry, age, disability, marital status and veteran status.