Process Modelling & Simulation Lead – Synthetic Molecules Technical Development
Notify me about similar jobsAbout this opportunity
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
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 Opportunity
Lead the Modelling & Simulation Centre of Excellence (CoE): Define the strategy, vision, roadmap, standards, and governance for M&S across Synthetic Molecules Technical Development (PTDC), matrix-leading a cross-departmental community of 20+ experts around shared organizational priorities.
Drive Strategic Alignment & Leadership: Influence and guide senior leaders across an organization of 700+ employees, proposing innovative ways of working, prioritizing high-impact applications, and serving as a key cross-functional connector without direct formal authority.
Shape End-to-End M&S Strategy: Identify where mechanistic, hybrid, and data-driven modelling deliver maximum impact across both Drug Substance and Drug Product lifecycles, from early lab development through scale-up, technology transfer, and commercial manufacturing.
Deliver High-Impact Process Solutions: Act as the senior technical authority on complex development challenges, leveraging chemical engineering principles to optimize processes, support experimental design, refine scale-up/scale-down models, and support regulatory submissions.
Build Reusable Digital Capabilities: Spearhead the creation of validated model libraries, digital twins, scale-up tools, and self-service applications to establish consistent, scalable modelling standards and reduce duplicated effort across project teams.
Drive Organizational Capability & Literacy: Coach and mentor scientists and engineers, elevating M&S literacy across project teams while fostering seamless collaboration between domain experts, modellers, data scientists, and technical partner functions.
Connect Roche with External Innovation: Establish external partnerships with universities, research consortia, and technology vendors to evaluate emerging scientific advances and integrate cutting-edge M&S methodologies into the organization.
Manage Hardware & Software Strategy: Influence high-value technology investments and vendor partnerships, maintaining governance and decision-making over a six-figure software portfolio.
Who You Are
Advanced Academic Foundation: Master’s degree or PhD in Chemical Engineering, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemistry, or a closely related discipline.
Extensive Process & Modelling Leadership: 12+ years of professional experience in process engineering and M&S within the pharmaceutical or science-based industries, demonstrating deep technical expertise across end-to-end Drug Substance and Drug Product development.
Proven Matrix Leadership & Stakeholder Influence: Demonstrated ability to lead complex initiatives across matrixed organizations, challenge the status quo, and align senior decision-makers across PTD and R&D without relying on direct organizational authority to champion, advocate for, and bring visibility to M&S initiatives.
Advanced Modelling & Programming Expertise: Hands-on experience with industry-standard modelling platforms (e.g., gPROMS/gWAP, Dynochem) and scientific programming languages (Python, MATLAB), combined with strong knowledge of scale-up/down dynamics and pharmaceutical manufacturing phenomena.
Integration of Emerging Technologies: Deep understanding of classical mechanistic modelling, computational fluid dynamics (e.g., COMSOL, M-Star), model-based process control, PAT, and emerging AI/ML paradigms (including hybrid models, digital twins, and agentic AI).
Strategic & Conceptual Mindset: Exceptional conceptual thinking skills, with a proven track record of translating complex individual technical problems into reusable model libraries, digital capabilities, and scalable organizational frameworks.
Strong Communication & Scientific Collaboration: Fluent in English (written and spoken) with exceptional communication skills to translate sophisticated modelling concepts, assumptions, and limitations into clear, actionable insights for both technical specialists and leaders.
Ready to bring your unique qualities to Roche and make an impact? Apply now and join us in our mission to shape the future of healthcare.
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.
Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Manufacturing & CMC role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 3428 comparable Manufacturing & CMC roles across 175 biopharma companies.
Salary context
813 of 3428 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function. This posting doesn't list a seniority level, so peers aren't narrowed by seniority either -- the range below may span more levels than usual.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 3428 comparable roles
+ 55 more countries
Seniority mix
1516 of 3428 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
22 of 3428 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
Similar opportunities
The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.
Notify me about similar jobs
Get an email when we spot other openings like this one – same job function, comparable seniority, roles you'd actually want to see.
Or follow a whole field: get every new Manufacturing & CMC job in Switzerland, and choose locations and companies.
How we calculate "similar"
No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.
Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.
0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.