Principal Engineer II, Fluidic Systems Integration, Research & Early Development

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

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.

At Roche, we are working to make next-generation sequencing simple and accessible enough for routine use. By accelerating clinical research, streamlining workflows, and expanding assay menus, we are broadening access to genomic data and lowering barriers to adoption. From robust sample isolation and preparation tools to novel sequencing technology and advanced bioinformatics, we are developing differentiated, highly integrated end-to-end solutions for next-generation sequencing, resulting in a sample in, result out workflow.

Our Systems Technology Group, a part of Roche Sequencing Solutions, is focused on creating and advancing technologies to significantly enhance DNA sequencing workflows. We are seeking a Principal Fluidic Systems Integration Engineer II to serve as a critical technical leader in evaluating, integrating, and optimizing novel fluidic and mechatronic systems during the earliest stages of research and development.

This is a pivotal, hands-on role for a multidisciplinary expert who is passionate about pioneering new technologies and making them work reliably by mastering the complex intersection of chemistry, molecular biology, and biochemistry with hardware, surfaces, and materials. The ideal candidate thrives at the nexus, capable of rigorously testing system concepts, integrating complex subsystems, and optimizing performance based on first principles.

This role requires close collaboration with scientific and design teams and will focus on the critical tasks of integrating, characterizing, troubleshooting, and optimizing proposed concepts and early prototypes. You will be the engineering force responsible for answering the crucial R&D question: "Can we make this proposed technology work robustly and reliably?" You will evaluate the feasibility of new concepts by integrating subsystems, conducting rigorous testing on breadboards and prototypes, identifying failure modes, and providing data-driven feedback to guide design iterations, ensuring the technical foundation for the next generation of sequencing platforms is sound.

Your Role and Responsibilities

• System Evaluation & Feasibility Assessment: Critically evaluate proposed fluidic architectures, subsystems, and workflows for next-generation sequencing applications. Integrate, test, and characterize early-stage hardware to establish fundamental feasibility and de-risk new technological approaches through rigorous experimentation.

• Workflow Integration & Optimization: Lead efforts to translate complex, multi-step chemical, biochemical and molecular biology protocols from the benchtop onto early-stage instruments, breadboards, and custom test fixtures with novel fluidic and microfluidic systems. Optimize fluidic protocols and hardware interactions for performance, reliability, and robustness.

• Hands-on Testing & Characterization: Specify requirements, assemble, commission, and utilize custom test fixtures, breadboards, and automation scripts (e.g., Python) required for early-stage system characterization, proof-of-concept validation, and feasibility studies.

• Hypothesis-Driven Experimentation: Design and execute rigorous experiments to characterize system performance. This includes pushing the boundaries of new technologies, identifying critical failure modes at the interface of biology, chemistry, and hardware, and driving optimization efforts.

• First-Principles Troubleshooting: Lead early-stage, deep-dive troubleshooting efforts for complex performance issues on novel systems, seamlessly connecting systemic failures back to first-principles root causes—whether molecular, chemical, material, physical, or control-related.

• Data Analysis & Communication: You will analyze complex, multi-modal data sets and author detailed technical reports, characterization summaries, and feasibility studies. You'll also generate intellectual property related to integrat