Senior Scientist, Antibody Discovery

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

SENIOR SCIENTIST FOR ANTIBODY DISCOVERY AT ROCHE INNOVATION CENTER SHANGHAI (CICoR)

POSITION

At Roche, over 90,000 colleagues are working together on novel medicines patients need next.  Our ambition is to deliver novel therapeutics, diagnostic solutions and insights to patients with game-changing clinical benefits. Roche Innovation Center Shanghai is seeking a talented and experienced Senior Scientist for the discovery of novel antibody leads for therapeutic development. The final level of the position offered depends on the experience and qualification of the candidate. This position requires the candidate to be able to execute efficient discovery of antibody leads with a lean team using cutting edge technologies in single B cell and/or naïve library-based platforms incorporating AI/ML aided optimal hits identification.  The successful candidate will also work closely with dynamic and highly motivated teams in Antibody engineering, Protein Sciences, Structural Biology, AIDD, Pharmaceutical Sciences, CMC, and disease areas in Immunology, Oncology and Cardiovascular Metabolic diseases to drive the complete process of therapeutics antibody development for unmet medical needs.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Leading antibody discovery team in the generation of antibody leads from either in vivo or in vitro platforms for CICoR’s therapeutic antibody development pipeline

• Working with therapeutic project teams, design appropriate discovery campaign strategy for each specific project, including strategies for immunization, screening assay development, hits selection and screening for single B and/or phage library approach as relevant.  

• Working with discovery team members, lead and perform experiments in antibody discovery campaigns for antibody hits generation, including single B cell processing, V gene cloning/sequencing, yeast and/or phage library panning and screening, and activity confirmation 

• Act as Research Project Co-Lead (Co-RPL) for leading multidisciplinary collaboration between functional groups within CICoR and potentially pRED/gRED for therapeutic antibody development projects until PCC stage.

• Application of AI/ML capabilities in the process of discovery campaigns.

• Coordinate with CROs and monitor outsourcing activities to ensure timely delivery of qualified data or products for discovery activities as needed.

• Actively monitor discovery technology development and initiate/participate evaluation and development of relevant novel technologies for application in house.

CANDIDATE PROFILE

Qualification and experience

The candidate should hold a Ph.D. in biological sciences with at least 5 years on antibody discovery activities preferably in biotechnology or pharma setting, such as single B technology, yeast display or phage display based antibody hit panning & screening, computational based large scale sequence analysis, high throughput screening assay design and execution. A track record of effective and efficient antibody discovery in drug discovery programs is highly desirable. 

Competencies

The ideal candidate will have demonstrated competence in the following areas:

• Deep understanding of antibody discovery technologies and workflows. Rich experience in at least one of the areas in single B technology, display (either yeast or phage, preferably both).  

• Familiar with high throughput antibody screening assay design and execution

• Good experiences with bulk antibody sequence analysis (such as NGS).  

• Experiences with microfluidics based single cell sorting and assay system a great bonus

• Strong background in biology with ability to quickly understand disease mechanisms and project rational

• Highly desired experience in Library design and construction incorporating AI/ML also a great plus

• Experience with cloud or high-performance computing (e.g. AWS, GCP) and AI/ML to model sequence and biological data is highly preferred.

• Solid record of accomplishments and publications as evidence of scientific knowledge. The proven ability to learn new techniques, solving issues, and to have a sustained record of productivity.

• Excellent communication and leadership skills with a deep commitment to working as part of matrix teams and member development.  

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.