Dear Roche hiring team,

I am applying for the Principal Software/Data Engineer position in Basel because the role fits the work I do best: designing secure, scalable production systems that connect data, software architecture, AI-enabled workflows, and product delivery. I am based in Basel, hold EU citizenship, do not require a work permit, and bring more than 20 years of software engineering experience across Switzerland, Germany, Greece, Brazil, and Portugal.

My background combines platform engineering, data pipelines, front-end interfaces, back-end APIs, CI/CD, and production operations. Most of my systems have used PostgreSQL or compatible relational database patterns, and I am comfortable designing schemas, query paths, APIs, and operational safeguards around live data. I have built React/TypeScript interfaces, Python/Ruby/TypeScript back ends, Docker-based deployments, AWS services, Kubernetes environments, and CI/CD workflows.

A strong example is my independent project rodado/baseldosdados: a production data platform around one of the largest Brazilian public-data mirrors exposed through MCP-style tooling. It covers hundreds of public datasets, approximately 675 GB of Parquet+zstd data, DuckDB, S3-compatible object storage, semantic table search, an LLM natural-language-to-SQL workflow, a programmatic SQL API, and read-only access controls. The system handles domains such as health, education, elections, companies, public contracts, employment, and demographic indicators. Building it required partition-aware query design, join-key modelling, result validation, credentials isolation, logging, reproducible schema metadata, and careful handling of personal identifiers such as CPF/CNPJ.

This is the same engineering pattern I would bring to Roche: robust software architecture for data- and ML-driven products, reliable APIs and pipelines, usable interfaces for complex outputs, and disciplined production practices. I understand the difference between a promising prototype and a system that teams can trust, operate, monitor, and extend. I also enjoy the product side of that work: balancing technical trade-offs with user impact, business value, maintainability, and delivery speed.

At Swisscom, I worked on modernization of mission-critical internal platforms and CI/CD pipelines for high-availability telecom infrastructure. At EDGE Empower, I led a small engineering and UX team, built a PayTool that reduced processing time by 98%, and shortened a CI/CD pipeline from 14 minutes to 4 minutes. Across consulting work, fintech/KYC systems, civic data platforms, and investigative data tools, I have collaborated with UX designers, product managers, researchers, journalists, and technical teams to translate ambiguous needs into working software.

I also match the academic and communication requirements: I hold a Bachelor in Computer Science, a Master in Information Systems focused on knowledge representation and reasoning, and a postgraduate degree in Data Science for Finance. I am used to explaining complex systems clearly, mentoring others, documenting reusable patterns, and working across cultures in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and German B1.

While I have not worked directly inside clinical development, I have worked in regulated and sensitive-data contexts including Swiss data protection, fintech/KYC, telecom infrastructure, and public-sector data. I understand the importance of auditability, reproducibility, access control, privacy, and conservative engineering when software supports important decisions. I would bring that mindset to Roche's Product Development Data Sciences environment and learn the clinical and GxP-specific context with discipline.

What attracts me most is the Innovation Accelerator's position between strategy, experimentation, and production. I enjoy exploring emerging technologies, validating them through real use cases, and making the engineering decisions that allow pilots and MVPs to become secure, maintainable products.

Sincerely,

Rafael Polo