Founding CTO / Technical Co-Founder, Genome2Protocol

About TraceLine Solutions

TraceLine Solutions GmbH is a Zurich-based life sciences data company specialized in biomedical data science, semantic architecture, and regulatory bioinformatics. We specialise in turning fragmented research data into structured, machine-readable assets through ontology-driven design, data lineage, and standards-aligned automation.

Our clients are biotech and life sciences organisations navigating the complexity of clinical, genomic, and real-world data, from trial design and data standards governance to cross-source harmonisation and precision medicine applications. We work at the technical frontier of the field, where computable science meets regulatory rigour.

TraceLine Solutions is early-stage and founder-led. We are building a small, senior team where each person owns their domain and contributes directly to the company's scientific and commercial trajectory.

The Role

Genome2Protocol, our federated genomic intelligence platform, queries population-scale genomic databases against clinical trial eligibility criteria to estimate patient availability before a trial site is activated. We are looking for a founding CTO or technical co-founder to own the platform's architecture end to end: the query engine, the semantic harmonisation layer, and the aggregation logic that makes cross-database estimates defensible to sophisticated domain players.

This is a pre-seed, builder-level role. You will be the sole technical owner for the next 12 to 18 months, working directly with the founder on architecture, product, and select partner and investor conversations.

What You Will Do

Own the technical implementation of the platform end to end, from architecture through to a working, pilot-ready product

Architect and build the federated query engine, defining the core data model and query orchestration strategy across distributed, heterogeneous data sources.

Design and maintain the semantic harmonisation layer across heterogeneous genomic and clinical data sources, including ontology-based population and phenotype alignment, and statistically sound frequency aggregation.

Implement queries against population-scale genome programs, rare disease registries, and public standards infrastructure.

Build a provenance and audit-trail layer sufficient to reconstruct every step of an estimate deterministically, using schema validation to enforce output integrity

Design the technical approach for privacy-by-design, aggregate-only computation as the platform moves toward negotiated biobank data access

Own technical decisions on infrastructure, stack, and build sequencing as a solo technical function

Contribute to scientific validation, technical due diligence materials, and investor materials as the company raises its seed round.

Your Profile

Must have

• Demonstrated experience with federated or distributed query architectures and data integration pipelines, ideally including systems that must reason about partial, uncertain, or conflicting data from independent sources rather than a single clean dataset
• Solid grounding in semantic web technologies and ontology mapping: RDF, OWL, SPARQL and SHACL at a level of genuine technical peer depth, including practical experience with triplestores and provenance modelling (PROV-O or equivalent)
• Fluency with the modern semantic web and knowledge graph tooling ecosystem: graph databases and triplestores, ontology engineering environments, reasoners or validation tooling built around them, and modern API design including GraphQL
• Full-stack development capability, or proven solution architect experience directing full-stack delivery through a team
• Comfortable operating as a solo builder in a pre-seed environment, without an existing team or codebase
• Based in Switzerland or holding the right to work in Switzerland
• Fluency in English

Nice to have

• Working knowledge of population genomics data sufficient to catch methodological errors in cross-source aggregation, for example why allele frequencies from overlapping cohorts cannot simply be summed
• Familiarity with GA4GH standards, in particular Beacon v2, and the ability to reason clearly about application-layer versus protocol-layer design
• Experience with statistical or probabilistic modelling for producing confidence-bounded estimates from incomplete or heterogeneous input data
• Familiarity with clinical data standards relevant to trial design and patient stratification
• Familiarity with biomedical ontologies and terminologies: SNOMED CT, HPO, HGVS, MedDRA, ICD, FHIR/HL7

What We Offer

• A technically demanding, high-autonomy, rewarding environment at the frontier of biomedical data science, with founding-level equity and ownership of the platform's technical direction.
• Compensation is structured to reflect the stage of the company and is negotiable based on the path that best fits your contributions and aspirations, from employee to co-founder level.
• Flexible working arrangements: remote within Switzerland, with presence in Zurich as required
• A founding-team environment where your work shapes both the product and the company.