Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Agentic Science/Generative Models, AI for Biology & Translati[...]

Genentech; South San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 168,000 - 312,000; Full time

Job summary

Genentech’s AI Biology & Translation (AIBT) department is building the next generation of AI systems for biology. We seek a Senior ML Engineer to join our Generative Modeling team and help design, develop, and scale large-scale foundation models and AI agents for therapeutic discovery.

This role spans agent design, orchestration, and the infrastructure that makes these systems robust at scale. You’ll work with ML scientists and computational biologists to deliver shippable systems, contribute to

Qualifications

• BS/MS in CS, ML, engineering or related field.
• 5+ years building and shipping ML systems.
• Excellent Python; strong software fundamentals (Git, automated testing, CI/CD).
• Track record leading technical projects end to end.
• Comfort with ambiguity and collaboration with scientists.

Responsibilities

• Build agents that use tools and reason across workflows.
• Develop interfaces between agents and data sources.
• Design evaluation harnesses against ground truth.
• Design self-improving loops for autoML and lab-in-the-loop.
• Own MLOps/AgentOps lifecycle: CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code.

Skills

Python

ML systems

Git

CI/CD

Collaboration

Education

BS/MS in CS/ML/engineering

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

Helm

SageMaker

AWS

Job description

The Position

A healthier future. It’s what drives us to innovate. To continuously advance science and ensure everyone has access to the healthcare they need today and for generations to come. Creating a world where we all have more time with the people we love. That’s what makes us Roche.

Advances in AI, data, and computational sciences are transforming drug discovery and development. Roche’s Research and Early Development organisations at Genentech (gRED) and Pharma (pRED) have demonstrated how these technologies accelerate R&D, leveraging data and novel computational models to drive impact. Seamless data sharing and access to models across gRED and pRED are essential to maximising these opportunities. The new Computational Sciences Center of Excellence (CoE) is a strategic, unified group whose goal is to harness the transformative power of data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist our scientists in both pRED and gRED to deliver more innovative and transformative medicines for patients worldwide.

The Opportunity

The AI Biology & Translation (AIBT) department within Genentech's Computational Sciences Center of Excellence (CS-CoE) is building the next generation of AI systems for biology. Our mission is to develop AI models that learn from biological data at unprecedented scale, generating new insights into disease mechanisms, therapeutic opportunities, and human biology. We seek a highly motivated and passionate Senior ML Engineer to join our Generative Modeling team and help build and scale foundation models and agentic systems for therapeutic discovery. The successful candidate will contribute to the design, development, and scaling of large-scale foundation models and AI agents, with the ultimate aim of accelerating target and drug discovery. This role spans the full stack: the agent design and orchestration logic that makes these systems scientifically useful, and the infrastructure, AgentOps, and MLOps that make them robust, reproducible, and efficient at scale. Depending on team coverage at a given time, you may own infrastructure end-to-end or partner with platform engineering on it, this role needs someone comfortable doing either.

You’ll join a multidisciplinary environment alongside ML scientists, ML engineers, and computational biologists. The ideal candidate combines strong software and ML engineering skills, a systems mindset, fluency in how agentic systems are actually built and evaluated, and a "get-it-done" attitude.

In this role, you will:

Agentic systems

• Build agents that use tools, retrieve evidence, and reason across multi-step scientific workflows

• Build reliable interfaces between agents and biological, genomic, and clinical data sources

• Design evaluation harnesses that check agent output against scientific ground truth

• Design and implement self-improving and autonomous loops for autoML and lab in the loop

• Implement agent memory and context management for long-horizon workflows
  

Models and production systems

• Build, finetune, deploy, and scale foundation models and LLMs in production

• Own production Python/PyTorch (or JAX) codebases that turn fast-moving research ideas into reliable, reusable software

• Own the MLOps/AgentOps lifecycle: experiment tracking, evaluation, monitoring, reproducibility, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Helm, Kubernetes)

Collaboration

• Work with research scientists to turn open-ended scientific problems into scoped, shippable systems

• Raise the engineering bar across gRED and Roche

Who you are

• BS/MS in CS, ML, engineering, or a related quantitative field

• 5+ years building and shipping ML systems in industry

• Excellent Python; strong software and data engineering fundamentals (Git, automated testing, CI/CD, documentation)

• Track record leading technical projects end to end

• Comfort with ambiguity and close collaboration with scientists

• Strong problem-solving and communication skills

• Interest or experience in applying ML to scientific discovery (AI for science), such as biology, chemistry, or drug discovery, including working with domain-specific data and models.

Preferred

• Inference-time scaling and optimization: test-time compute, sampling and search strategies, model routing, batching, caching, latency/cost/quality tradeoffs

• ML infrastructure on AWS (EC2, S3, EKS, SageMaker), including distributed training and inference on HPC

• Evaluation systems for agentic applications where correctness is scientifically defined

• Agent orchestration frameworks in production (LangGraph, MCP-based tool integration)

Relocation benefits are NOT available for this job posting

The expected salary range for this position based on the primary location of San Francisco is $168,100 - 312,300 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

#ComputationCoE

#tech4lifeComputationalScience

Genentech is an equal opportunity employer. It is our policy and practice to employ, promote, and otherwise treat any and all employees and applicants on the basis of merit, qualifications, and competence. The company's policy prohibits unlawful discrimination, including but not limited to, discrimination on the basis of Protected Veteran status, individuals with disabilities status, and consistent with all federal, state, or local laws.

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