About 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
As a senior leader in business development Search & Evaluation, you play a pivotal role in identifying, evaluating, and advancing groundbreaking external innovation across Neuroscience, Ophthalmology, and Rare Diseases. You collaborate across discovery research, clinical development, commercial, and business development to find and assess therapeutic opportunities that have the potential to transform patient outcomes.
Your opportunity
Drive external scouting strategies to source therapeutic assets, platform technologies, and capabilities aligned with scientific priorities across Neuroscience, Ophthalmology, and Rare Diseases.
Build and sustain relationships across biotechnology companies, academic institutions, venture investors, and life-science hubs to capture high-impact opportunities early.
Lead rigorous translational assessments of external innovations, analyzing differentiation, mechanism of action, data quality, and strategic fit.
Synthesize diverse perspectives from cross-functional teams of scientific and commercial experts into clear, actionable progression recommendations.
Partner with Business Development colleagues to guide high-priority opportunities through diligence , and strategic deal workflows.
Represent the organization externally at global scientific, partnering, and medical conferences, demonstrating curiosity, respect, and long-term partnership commitment.
Maintain high-quality opportunity documentation, landscape intelligence and decision records, and help evolve AI-enabled approaches to search, monitoring and evaluation.
Who You Are
You bring deep scientific curiosity, analytical rigor, and a collaborative mindset to evaluating complex external innovation. You are driven by the ambition to translate bold scientific concepts into real solutions for patients worldwide.
Advanced degree (PhD, MD, PharmD, or equivalent) in Life Sciences, Medicine, Pharmacy, or a closely related discipline.
Proven scientific or clinical expertisein Neuroscience, Ophthalmology, Rare Diseases, or adjacent therapeutic areas, with the agility to master emerging scientific spaces.
Substantial professional experience (typically 10+ years) across pharmaceutical/biotech R&D, clinical development, Search & Evaluation, licensing, or venture investment.
Demonstrated capability in evaluating early-to-clinical stage scientific data, identifying key risks, and framing recommendations under ambiguity.
Proven track record of building collaborative professional relationships across external life-science ecosystems and guiding cross-functional teams in a global matrix setting.
Professional-level English communication skills, with the ability to convey complex scientific assessments with clarity to technical and executive audiences.
Are you ready to take the next step, apply now!
Where pay transparency applies, details are provided based on the primary posting location. For this role, the primary location is Basel. If you are interested in additional locations where the role may be available, we will provide the relevant compensation details later in the hiring process.
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 BD&L & Strategic Planning role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 397 comparable BD&L & Strategic Planning roles across 86 biopharma companies.
Salary context
116 of 397 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 397 comparable roles
+ 32 more countries
Seniority mix
295 of 397 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
57 of 397 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.
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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.