The ETH Zurich technology platform
NEXUS Personalized Health enables discovery and translational research for personalized health. We offer a broad range of expertise across Clinical Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Software Engineering, Systems Operations, and Screening & Lab Automation.
Embedded in this multi-disciplinary environment, the Software Engineering group builds data-centric software products that make biomedical and clinical data usable in practice. The team currently has 5 members and supports a broad portfolio, ranging from internal tools and research platforms to applications developed together with clinical partners.
Job description As Group Leader Software Engineering, you lead a team that designs and builds software products across a diverse portfolio of research and translational projects. You take responsibility for delivery, engineering standards, and long-term maintainability. A key part of the role is building and maintaining a healthy project pipeline through active stakeholder management.
- 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: set and enforce standards across architecture, code quality, testing, documentation, and maintainability.
- Delivery ownership: lead delivery across multiple concurrent projects, translating real needs into clear scope, milestones, and outcomes, even when requirements evolve.
- Project acquisition and customer management: build relationships with researchers, clinicians, hospitals, and partners, and turn first conversations into scoped proposals with clear trade-offs.
- Full-stack and data-centric systems: guide end-to-end solutions from database modelling to API design to user-facing web applications and dashboards. We primarily use Postgres, Django REST Framework, and Vue.js (or comparable technologies) as well as cloud-based ELT solutions like Databricks in combination with Data Build Tool (DBT).
- Internal product portfolio: turn project work into reusable building blocks and tools that strengthen NEXUS's internal portfolio.
- Security with pragmatism: drive solutions that are as open as possible and as restricted as necessary, avoiding avoidable security friction while keeping protection fit for purpose.
- Handover mindset: ensure systems are built to transition into real-world research use and clinical application in a controlled way, with clear ownership boundaries, documentation, and predictable handovers to Systems Operations once solutions mature.
- Cross-team collaboration: work closely with Clinical Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Systems Operations, and Screening & Lab Automation to deliver integrated solutions end-to-end.
- People leadership: recruit, mentor, and develop team members, fostering ownership and continuous improvement.
- Resource management: plan capacity, prioritize work, and contribute to budgeting and reporting for the group.
Quick Self-Check
You will thrive in this role if:
- You enjoy building software that is used in real clinical and research contexts, where quality and impact matter.
- You take ownership of delivery outcomes and like leading projects and people-not just implementing features.
- You are energized by working across a diverse portfolio of projects and stakeholders rather than a single stable product.
- You enjoy consultative work: building relationships, scoping initiatives, prioritizing effectively, and managing expectations.
- You proactively consider security and compliance when working with sensitive data.
- You can lead delivery across stakeholders and keep projects moving without sacrificing quality.
- You like creating reusable components and pragmatically raising engineering standards.
- You are comfortable with ambiguity and can turn incomplete requirements into staged, testable deliverables.
Profile Non-Negotiables:
- Proven leadership experience in software engineering.
- Proven experience leading delivery across multiple stakeholders and projects.
- Strong stakeholder skills: trust-building, scoping, expectation management.
- Proven experience designing and implementing data-centric software solutions end-to-end (database, APIs, web applications).
- Strong Linux/Unix experience, scripting (bash, Python), and a practical automation mindset.
- Containerization experience (Docker or comparable).
- Excellent communication skills in English.
Strongly Expected:
- Track record establishing team-wide practices: code reviews, testing strategy, CI/CD, release process, documentation standards.
- Experience building software for security-conscious environments, with pragmatic judgement.
Advantageous:
- Data engineering experience (ETL/ELT design, validation, interoperability patterns).
- Experience working with hospital IT contexts or clinical workflows.
- Knowledge of German.
We offer - At NEXUS we value knowledge exchange and working together as a team, where everyone brings in their own expertise
- We have flat hierarchies and a can-do attitude. We offer flexible working hours and family-friendly working models, training opportunities, and a broad and exciting field of work at the cutting edge of translational research
> Working, teaching and research at ETH Zurich We value diversity and sustainability In line with
our values, ETH Zurich encourages an inclusive culture. We promote equality of opportunity, value diversity and nurture a working and learning environment in which the rights and dignity of all our staff and students are respected. Visit our
Equal Opportunities and Diversity website to find out how we ensure a fair and open environment that allows everyone to grow and flourish. Sustainability is a core value for us - we are consistently working towards a
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