Validation Lead - RDT Artificial Intelligence — Roche

Full description

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

Validation Lead - RDT Artificial Intelligence

AI validation is one of the most complex and consequential emerging disciplines in enterprise technology - and there is no established playbook. As Validation Lead within RDT Artificial Intelligence, you will help write it.

This role sits at the intersection of cutting-edge AI systems and the rigorous compliance standards of one of the world’s leading healthcare companies. You will design and implement the validation frameworks, risk strategies, and governance programs that ensure our AI platforms - from LLM-powered applications to autonomous agentic systems - are safe, auditable, and compliant at enterprise scale.

Validating AI is fundamentally different from validating traditional software. Models evolve, agents make decisions, and outputs are probabilistic. The stakes in healthcare are high. This role offers a genuinely rare opportunity to build expertise and set standards in a space that regulators, industry peers, and technology leaders are still figuring out - with the resources of a global enterprise behind you.

The Opportunity

1. AI Validation Strategy &Compliance

• Validation Framework Design: Develop and implement comprehensive validation strategies for AI and ML systems, including LLMs, RAG pipelines, and agentic workflows -applying risk-based approaches appropriate to the novelty and complexity of each system.
• Regulatory Alignment: Translate evolving regulatory guidance (FDA, EMA, GxP frameworks) into practical validation standards for AI systems used in research, diagnostics, and enterprise operations. Ensure our platforms remain audit-ready as the regulatory landscape matures.
• Policy & Documentation: Improve and maintain validation policies, procedures, and qualification documentation - ensuring they reflect both current best practice and the unique characteristics of AI-driven systems.

1. Risk Management & Incident Response

• AI Risk Assessment: Lead complex risk assessments for AI platform deployments, identifying failure modes specific to probabilistic systems - including model drift, hallucination risks, and agentic decision failures - and designing mitigation strategies accordingly.
• Critical Incident Leadership: Lead responses to compliance and continuity events affecting AI systems, conducting post-incident reviews to strengthen validation controls and prevent recurrence.
• Business Continuity: Develop and test continuity and recovery plans for AI-dependent processes, ensuring resilience across the enterprise AI ecosystem.

1. Stakeholder Engagement & Governance

• Expert Advisory: Act as the internal authority on AI validation and compliance - advising product teams, architects, and senior leadership on what it takes to deploy AI responsibly in a regulated environment.
• Audit & Oversight: Facilitate internal and external audits relating to AI systems, managing relationships with high-level stakeholders and regulators with confidence and technical credibility.
• Capability Building: Train teams on advanced validation techniques, risk management practices, and Business Continuity Management (BCM) in the context of AI - building organisational capability as the function scales.

1. Enterprise Tooling & Scalability

• Tool Selection & Integration: Evaluate and select enterprise validation and compliance tooling suited to AI systems, ensuring solutions scale with the pace of AI adoption across Roche.
• Strategic Alignment: Collaborate with AI Architects, platform teams, and lea