Senior Data Scientist - Generative AI & Agentic Systems
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 Data Scientist - Generative AI, you will join the Global Analytics and Technology Center of Excellence (GATE) in San José, Costa Rica. In this hands-on, high-impact role, you will design and deploy cutting-edge agentic capabilities and enterprise Generative AI applications. Moving seamlessly across the full product stack, from problem framing and data retrieval to multi-agent flow design, API development, and LLMOps evaluation, you will serve as a subject matter expert driving state-of-the-art AI architectures into production.
The Opportunity Agentic Application Design: Architect end-to-end multi-agent applications, retrieval layer solutions, and foundational AI capabilities, taking ideas from prototype to production deployment.
Advanced RAG & Retrieval: Build and optimize advanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines, incorporating vector/graph databases, reranking algorithms, chunking strategies, and hybrid retrieval.
Production-Grade Engineering: Write clean, tested Python code, manage APIs, enforce version control, and set up CI/CD pipelines for Generative AI systems.
LLMOps & System Observability: Implement evaluation harnesses, prompt/version management, cost/latency optimization, and token economics monitoring for production agents.
Strategic AI Consulting: Influence technical priorities across global enterprise stakeholders, evaluating when to deploy GenAI versus classical ML or deterministic engineering methods.
Mentorship & Collaboration: Coach team members on agentic flow design and partner with Product Owners to align technical execution with user experience strategy.
Who You Are Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, AI/ML, or a related quantitative field.
7+ years of professional experience, with demonstrated hands-on expertise building enterprise Generative AI products and agentic workflows.
Deep technical mastery of LLMs, vector databases, graph databases, reranking algorithms, and Agentic frameworks (LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, AWS AgentCore).
Proven track record in RAG architecture design, chunking optimization, and retrieval quality evaluation.
Solid software engineering skills in Python, SQL (and AI-generated SQL), API development, and MLOps/LLMOps monitoring platforms.
Familiarity with agent protocols (MCP, A2A), multimodal AI applications, and frontend/UI tools (Figma, React, Angular) is advantageous.
Must be currently based in Costa Rica or hold valid work authorization for San José.
No relocation benefits are offered for this position.
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 Information Technology role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 393 comparable Senior Information Technology roles across 49 biopharma companies.
Salary context
61 of 393 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 393 comparable roles
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Seniority mix
393 of 393 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
1 of 393 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
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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.