Join Our Team as Group Leader in Clinical Bioinformatics
The ETH Zurich technology platform NEXUS Personalized Health is at the forefront of discovery and translational research for personalized health. Our platform offers a diverse array of expertise in Clinical Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Software Engineering, Systems Operations, and Screening & Lab Automation.
Within this multidisciplinary environment, the Clinical Bioinformatics group focuses on translating computational biology into clinically applicable outcomes, bridging the gap between biomedical research and clinical practice. Our initiatives include tailored analyses and the integration of high-dimensional molecular data, encompassing whole-genome variant calling, decision support, and single-cell sequencing analysis. We are committed to developing robust analytical workflows and reusable components in close collaboration with academic institutions and hospitals.
Your Role
As the Group Leader in Clinical Bioinformatics, you will lead a team of bioinformatics analysts and software engineers. Your responsibilities will include ensuring that analyses and workflows are reproducible, scalable, and suitable for translational and clinical contexts. You will drive innovation by continuously evaluating emerging technologies and analytical approaches, integrating the latest methods into clinical and translational research. A significant aspect of your role will involve securing, prioritizing, and strategically managing clinical and translational projects through active stakeholder engagement.
Key Responsibilities
- Project Management: Structure and oversee projects end-to-end, ensuring clear scope definition, milestone planning, risk management, documentation standards, and processes aligned with translational and clinical quality requirements.
- Technical Leadership: Drive the development and extension of pipelines using Nextflow and Snakemake, setting standards for workflow engineering, testing, documentation, and long-term maintainability.
- Delivery Ownership: Take responsibility for timelines, quality, and stakeholder alignment across multiple projects with variable scope.
- Project Acquisition and Customer Management: Build relationships with researchers, clinicians, and partners, shape projects, and translate needs into clear deliverables and expectations.
- Clinical Reporting and Decision Support: Transform complex, multimodal, and large-scale results into clear outputs for physicians, including dashboards and web-based reporting for decision support.
- Clinician Partnership: Actively engage with clinicians to clarify their needs, ensuring that interfaces remain simple while your team manages technical complexities.
- Innovation and Scientific Advancement: Stay abreast of developments in bioinformatics, AI, and data-driven medicine. Evaluate emerging methods and technologies, translating promising approaches into robust, clinically applicable solutions.
- Cross-Team Collaboration: Collaborate closely with the Software Engineering, Systems Operations, Biostatistics, and Screening & Lab Automation groups to deliver integrated solutions from end to end.
- People Leadership: Recruit, mentor, and develop team members, fostering knowledge exchange and maintaining high standards.
- Resource Management: Plan capacity, prioritize work, and assist with budgeting and reporting for the group.
Are You the Right Fit?
You will thrive in this role if:
- You enjoy managing projects from inception to delivery, collaborating closely with clinicians and partners.
- You prefer working across disciplines and building collaborative relationships rather than working in isolation.
- You are comfortable setting direction, prioritizing tasks, and being accountable for timelines and quality.
- You take pride in developing reliable workflows and continuously enhancing them to improve reproducibility, scalability, and impact.
- You can simplify complex, multimodal data into user-friendly outputs that meet physicians' needs without overwhelming them with technical details.
- You uphold high standards in workflow engineering, testing, and documentation while leading your team to achieve these standards together.
Required Qualifications
- Proven leadership experience in clinical bioinformatics, genomics, or translational research delivery.
- Hands-on experience in developing and extending analysis pipelines and reusable components.
- Experience with workflow management using Nextflow and/or Snakemake and the ability to set team standards.
- Daily practice of Git version control is essential.
- Strong communication skills with clinicians and effective stakeholder management abilities.
- Fluency in English, both spoken and written.
Preferred Qualifications
- Proficient programming skills in Python or R with a focus on code quality (reviews, testing, documentation).
- A solid track record with diverse data types, including variant calling, expression analyses, and single-cell sequencing analysis.
- Experience in quality control and reporting within genomics or transcriptomics.
- Experience in statistics or software engineering practices beyond scripting.
- Familiarity with HPC usage and Bash.
- Knowledge of German is advantageous.
Why Join NEXUS?
At NEXUS, we value knowledge exchange and teamwork, fostering an environment where everyone contributes their expertise. We offer flat hierarchies, a can-do attitude, flexible working hours, family-friendly working models, and training opportunities. Join us at the cutting edge of translational research.
Apply online using the form below. Please note that only applications matching the job profile will be considered.