Principal Design Researcher and Service Designer

Principal Design Researcher and Service Designer: Design Research / CXSD /Service Design / English / Deutsch

Background:

A leader who confidently manages the overall research delivery operations, builds strong relationships with both team members and customers, and impacts projects and business by enabling customer-centric best practices and strategic thinking. You’ll be part of building design maturity for Roche with peers who are passionate, energetic and caring in a connected, multicultural, highly motivated team.

The Perfect Candidate:

The ideal candidate is a strategic, resilient Design Research leader with 5-10 years of experience in medical technology or regulated environments, who serves as the project backbone from discovery to launch. They excel at integrating qualitative and quantitative data to craft compelling experience strategies, orchestrating research across multiple products, and communicating business value to key stakeholders at Roche. Beyond deliverable ownership, they actively shape client pitches, navigate complex domain and regulatory contexts, and elevate thought leadership. Operating with high autonomy and humility, they mentor junior designers, foster team growth, and proactively mitigate risks to keep cross-functional teams focused on long-term goals.

Tasks & Responsibilities:

• Leads design research teams in large/global cross-chapters projects
• Navigates the complexity of business objectives and customer needs and translates them into design decisions by applying a solid design thinking process aimed to successfully impact business and customer experience
• Produces key deliverables and leads the client conversation within their discipline
• Analyses and evaluates design challenges from multiple perspectives, and translates them quickly into granular activities for the team
• Translates the client’s expectations to detailed team day-to-day workstream work, and is able to speak to this integration in future conversations
• Coaches cross-chapter team members and other designers around design methodologies and best practices contributing to their skills development
• Leads practice discussions and may lead some aspects of team culture and rituals
• Gathers system-level information from multiple sources and communicate clearly to internal clients, users and customers
• Defines workshop goals and objectives, design and plan workshop exercises, facilitates workshop sessions and synthesizes information to support strategic project decisions

Additional tasks:

• Supports more senior roles in shaping approaches and pitching work to clients
• Supports more senior roles in managing day-to-day activities, and understands stakeholders‘ expectations and course-correct deviations in the project plan
• Leads the discussion about domain and regulatory context with clients, users and customers, and incorporates these inputs into design solutions
• Takes part in CXSD work packages aimed to create more efficient and effective processes and practices
• Supports constructive critique and personal feedback opportunities within the team, such as retrospectives, and suggest actions to take
• Creates content to support thought leadership initiatives
• Helps define overarching story and frameworks to be used during client

presentations. Communicates storyline to clients at Roche and potential users and customers, as appropriate.

• Represents the CXSD team in Roche events and meetings, and articulates the business value of design
• Actively captures value stories on projects and shares internally or via thought leadership
• Identifies inter-dependencies or risks early on, and propose solutions on how to address them
• Oversees and evaluates new team members during ramp-up. Acts as a buddy

Must Haves:

• Strong in-depth knowledge in Design Research and broad knowledge of related design disciplines (i.e. Product Design and Service Design)
• Ability to orchestrate the research activity across multiple projects
• A proven track record in creating experience strategy based on customer insights
• Ability to manage both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and different data set integration
• Ability to contribute to several products or services that have come to market with ownership of deliverables
• Experience in guiding more junior designers on projects that require in-depth knowledge of healthcare solution areas and related regulations
• Minimum 5-10 years of experience in med. Tech or regulated environments
• Great presentation skills and communicates ideas, solutions and deliverables effectively and logically when asked to
• Strategic thinker and results oriented able to drive experience and business conversations.
• Great team player able to generate consensus and buy-in in complex organizational contexts.
• Curious and humble: develop a learner approach to research and design challenges.
• Creative problem solvers are able to look for the best solution to address the challenge.
• Data driven to ground decision making on a robust understanding of the problem space.
• Often the „back-bone“ of projects from beginning to end.
• Usually leads the design process of one or two main projects and also manages design research discussions around similar projects or similar environments.
• Able to communicate organizational and product development changes to cross-chapter team members and other designers.
• Observes project challenges and discusses contingencies and mitigation ideas with project lead.
• Demonstrates resilience in the face of failure, obstacles, or project changes
• Has a deep commitment to the long-term project goals and is able to direct product and design team attention to them.
• Thinks logically and critically about client problems and is methodical and process-oriented on tackling those problems
• Able to work and to manage their project development independently. Requires only minimal guidance from more senior roles.
• Knows how to independently engage and communicate with Roche customers and potential customers to enable customer centricity within projects.

Reference Nr.: 925338
Rolle: Principal Design Researcher and Service Designer
Industrie: Pharma
Location: Rotkreuz
Pensum: 60 – 100%
Start: ASAP (01.01.2027)
Duration: 6++ Months(Planned extension for another 6 Months)
Deadline: 26/10/2026

If this position has piqued your interest, please send us your complete resume. If this position does not quite match your profile and you would like to receive other positions directly, you can also send us your resume via this ad or to jobs[at]itcag[dot]com.

Contact us for more information about our company, our positions, or our attractive payroll-only program: +41 41 760 77 01.

About us:

ITech Consult is an ISO 9001:2015-certified Swiss company with offices in Germany and Ireland. ITech Consult specializes in placing highly qualified candidates for temporary staffing in the fields of IT, life sciences, and engineering. We offer temporary staffing and payroll services. This is free of charge for our candidates, and we do not charge any additional fees for payroll services.