Principal Data Engineer / Data Lead

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

Who We Are
We are seeking an exceptionally skilled and influential Principal Data Engineer / Data Lead to join and provide technical leadership for the digital solution navify Cervical Screening. You will be a top-tier expert, driving architectural decisions, overseeing data integration and ensuring delivery of features and improvements. This is a critical leadership role for someone who is passionate about data, delivery and technical excellence.

As Data Lead, you will provide orchestration within cross-functional agile product teams, influencing the strategic direction and delivery of data-driven features. While hands-on contributions are expected, your primary focus as a Data Lead will be on ensuring the strategic differentiation of products through data and innovation, orchestrating DA&R capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive data integration and data fabric adoption across the domains, bringing together data, business and development domains.

• Ensure best practices and support organization-wide standards for data quality, governance, security, and observability.

• Act as a technical subject matter expert, mentoring Senior and Staff Engineers and collaborating closely with engineering leadership, data scientists, and business stakeholders.

• Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to shape data strategy, translate business needs into scalable technical solutions, and influence decision-making at both domain and enterprise levels.

• Spearhead the evaluation and integration of new technologies to continuously improve the performance and reliability of the data ecosystem.

• Troubleshoot and resolve the most complex performance and architectural challenges across the data ecosystem.

• You will be accountable for defining and ensuring timely delivery of all data-related requirements, including data integration, migration, storage, structure, legal compliance, privacy, quality, and insights generation.

• You will orchestrate DA&R engagement and delivery for digital products, activating the right DA&R capabilities. You will act as a key liaison, building and maintaining strong working relationships with cross-functional experts (other data experts, product owners, software engineers, clinicians) to jointly explore business opportunities and data assets.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional experience in a Data Engineering role, with significant experience operating at a Principal or Staff-level capacity .

• Expert proficiency in SQL and Python.

• Extensive experience architecting and managing large-scale cloud data platforms (e.g., AWS Glue, Google Dataflow, Azure Data Factory) and deep expertise in containerization and orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes).

• Deep, hands-on expertise in data warehousing concepts, advanced modeling techniques (e.g., dimensional modeling, data vault), and establishing data governance frameworks.

• Proven track record of building, optimizing, and leading the deployment of massive-scale, highly concurrent data pipelines using distributed processing frameworks (e.g., Apache Spark, Flink).

• Exceptional communication, negotiation, and influencing skills, with the ability to present complex technical concepts to both technical and executive audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Good command of Spanish.

• Deep experience with workflow orchestration tools (e.g., Apache Airflow, Dagster) and managing them at scale.

• Experience with NoSQL and graph databases (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra, Neo4j).

• Expertise in stream processing architectures and technologies (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, Pulsar).

• Extensive experience with Terraform, CloudFormation, or other advanced Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools and GitOps methodologies.

Where pay transparency applies, details are provided based on the primary posting location. For this role, the primary location is Sant Cugat del Vallès. 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.