From fresh graduate to acting manager - meet Daniel

I was living in Lithuania for 23 years when offered a role at Roche Poland. My brother had been with Roche at the time and said great things about it, so challenge accepted – I moved to Warsaw, not knowing that it’d become the second home where I’d build my career for 5 years and longer.

My name is Daniel and I have been working at Roche right after completing my studies. Since the day entering Roche as a fresh graduate, I have progressed to be now an experienced technical specialist within an international function namely Regional Customer Support Center (RCSC) of Roche Diagnostics. This is a community of around 600 engineers and biomedical scientists based across Europe, Middle East, Africa and Latin America, carrying out the mission of solving scientific and hardware issues for labs and clinics globally.

It is not easy to count the exact number, but to give it some context I would say there are between 50 and 100 hospitals/ research centers in 7 countries relying on our expertise solely from Warsaw. Thousands of patients are treated in these regions at any point in time, which made my work not only fulfilling, but also dynamic in terms of gaining knowledge in a multi-cultural team and moving further in my career.

Our impact

When it comes to saving or improving lives, one doesn’t have to be on the frontlines to make an impact at Roche.

As an engineer, I therefore take pride in remaining in the background to ensure our instruments perform reliably for healthcare professionals. A high-quality workflow resulting from our work is critical. But what's equally important is speed: with remote access and modern digital tools, I am happy to see that we are getting faster and faster in helping hospitals find a solution instead of keeping the testing lines on hold until we could reach their sites.

There is also that one time I remember – a kid was about to receive blood from a voluntary donor who tested positive for Hepatitis. It was a serious issue, so we immediately assisted the lab technician with follow-up diagnosis to verify his condition. The final results turned out to be one time positive and two times negative, meaning the donor was healthy and the kid would be safe receiving his blood. Nothing tragic happened, yet the event highlighted to me our role in the big picture: We combine biomedical science, engineering and digital technology to minimize risks for many patients out there.

 

The place to Work

Roche is certainly a people-focused company. Since I started with the team straight out of school, I have been lucky enough to be mentored by colleagues who have 10, 15 years of experience under their belt. From intensive training to hands-on practice and bigger responsibilities, a bit later into the role I was also given an opportunity to do a 3-month assignment in Switzerland, our headquarter, to upgrade my knowledge.

If you are an engineer and like challenges, you will surely get these at Roche and the RCSC given the range of healthcare customers and cutting-edge medical instruments we deal with. It might be difficult at first, but with the amount of trust from the managers and an open mindset to learn, you will achieve milestones in your career while making a mark on society. At the time of this note I am already a Certified Trainer and a senior member in the team, taking over from my manager to look after a group of 8 talented colleagues temporarily for a month!

 

Our culture

We can always count on each other.

It never happens that someone says "no I don't have time” here, because Roche gathers highly professional, well-educated and responsible people, which is probably our biggest advantage. I also appreciate the global nature of our collaboration where I am based in Warsaw but in regular contact with specialists from Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia…

It’s a really comfortable atmosphere at work as well – I have good laughs with the colleagues every day and my boss is very easy to talk to. It's not like we stick our eyes to the monitor and just work; we go for lunch, take a break, have tea or coffee and talk to each other. It was a fantastic memory when we once went to the river bank spontaneously after work and enjoyed some bonfire grill with beer together until the evening.

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