Group Leader Software Engineering

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.

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.