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 Clinical Bioinformatics group translates computational biology into clinically usable outcomes, working deliberately across the boundary between biomedical research and clinical practice. Our work includes project-tailored analyses and integration of high-dimensional molecular data, spanning from whole-genome variant calling and decision support to single-cell sequencing analysis. We develop and extend robust analysis workflows and reusable components, in close collaboration with academic institutions and hospitals.
Job description As Group Leader Clinical Bioinformatics, you lead a team of bioinformatics analysts and software engineers. You ensure that analyses and workflows are reproducible, scalable, and fit for translational and clinical contexts. You drive innovation by continuously evaluating emerging technologies and analytical approaches, integrating cutting-edge methods into clinical and translational research. A key part of the role is securing, prioritizing, and strategically managing clinical and translational projects through active stakeholder engagement.
- 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 development and extension of pipelines using Nextflow and Snakemake. Set 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: turn complex, multimodal, and large-scale results into clear outputs for physicians, including dashboards and web-based reporting for decision support
- Clinician partnership: listen closely, clarify what is useful, and keep the interface simple while your team handles technical complexity
- Innovation and scientific advancement: stay at the forefront of developments in bioinformatics, AI, and data-driven medicine, evaluate emerging methods and technologies, and translate promising approaches into robust, clinically applicable solutions
- Cross-team collaboration: work closely with the Software Engineering, Systems Operations, Biostatistics, and Screening & Lab Automation groups to deliver integrated solutions end-to-end
- People leadership: recruit, mentor, and develop team members, fostering knowledge exchange and high standards
- 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 owning projects end-to-end, from shaping the initial question with clinicians and partners to delivering robust, reusable solutions with clear outcomes
- You like working across disciplines and building close collaborations with clinicians and cross-functional partners, not working in a silo
- You are comfortable setting direction, making prioritisation calls, and being accountable for timelines and quality
- You like building workflows others rely on and continuously improving them to raise reproducibility, scalability, and impact
- You can turn complex, multimodal data into decision-support outputs that are clear, usable, and focused on what physicians actually need, rather than overwhelming them with technical detail
- You set a high bar for workflow engineering, testing, documentation, and Git-based collaboration, and you enjoy bringing a team along to meet that bar together
Profile Non-Negotiables:
- Proven leadership experience in clinical bioinformatics, genomics, or translational research delivery
- Hands-on experience developing and extending analysis pipelines and reusable components
- Workflow management with Nextflow and/or Snakemake, with the ability to set team standards
- Git version control as daily practice is a must
- Strong clinician-facing communication and stakeholder management skills
- Excellent communication skills in English
Strongly Expected:
- Solid programming in Python or R and strong code quality habits (reviews, testing, documentation)
- Track record across data types from variant calling and expression analyses to single-cell sequencing analysis
- Experience with quality control and reporting in genomics/transcriptomics
Advantageous:
- Experience in statistics or software engineering practices beyond scripting
- HPC usage and Bash
- 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
climate-neutral future.
