Chief Technology Officer

Position Overview

As the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), you will report directly to the Executive Director of the company.

You will provide critical technical and engineering oversight to portfolio companies under the management of Trendlines Medical Singapore, playing a pivotal role in product development strategy, technical stakeholder engagement, and medical device commercialization pathways.

Specifically, your day-to-day activities will involve working directly with the management and technical teams of early-stage portfolio companies. You will serve as the primary technical authority and decision-maker across our diverse portfolio, which includes both hardware-based medical devices and Standalone Software as a Medical Device (SaMD). You will define and drive strategic direction and decisions on engineering roadmaps, technical feasibility, and development milestones from a systems-thinking perspective, ensuring that each company's product development is robust, scalable, and aligned with commercial goals.

Key Responsibilities

• High-Level Technical Oversight: Own, direct, and evaluate the product development lifecycles, engineering roadmaps, and technical milestones across a diverse portfolio of companies specializing in either physical hardware medical devices or Standalone SaMD.
• Strategic Engineering Direction: Define and drive technical strategy and systems-level decisions to optimize product design, whether assessing hardware manufacturability and scaling or software development frameworks and data architectures.
• Milestone Tracking: Review and evaluate technical/R&D reports for investors, board members, and grant bodies, accurately assessing technical readiness levels (TRL) and engineering progress.
• Risk Mitigation: Identify potential technical bottlenecks, architectural flaws, cybersecurity risks, or engineering delays early in the development lifecycle and propose actionable solutions to the portfolio company's management.
• Stakeholder & Vendor Management: Lead portfolio companies in technical engagements with external partners, such as Contract Manufacturing Organizations (CMOs), specialized software development vendors, testing labs, and regulatory consultants.
• Board & Ecosystem Support: Advise and present directly to the Board of Directors on new technical proposals, preparing technical presentation materials for external stakeholders, and reviewing technical vendor agreements (SLAs/SOWs) in consultation with legal teams.

Skills and Experience

• Systems-Level Thinker: Strong ability to analyze and evaluate complex technical roadmaps, whether they are rooted in mechanical/electrical hardware or software engineering.
• Versatile Technical Literacy: Broad engineering background with the capacity to challenge assumptions and guide direction across distinct product types—from hardware fabrication and prototyping to software development lifecycles (SDLC) and cloud deployment.
• Medical Device Standards Awareness: Familiarity with the core design controls and standards governing both hardware safety (e.g., ISO 13485, IEC 60601) and medical software (e.g., IEC 62304, FDA SaMD guidelines) is highly advantageous.
• Proactive Problem Solver: Self-driven and detail-oriented with a strong capability to evaluate various technical options to support strategic business decisions.
• Impactful Communicator: Ability to translate complex engineering milestones and technical risks into clear, high-level business impacts for non-technical stakeholders, board members, and investors.
• Startup Mindset: Prior experience working within startups, early-stage incubators, or overseeing cross-functional technical projects is highly preferred.

Trendlines Medical Singapore Pte. Ltd is the first international incubator of The Trendlines Group Ltd (www.trendlines.com), a company traded on the Singapore Stock Exchange (42T.SI). Trendlines Medical Singapore dicovers, invests in, incubates and provides a range of support services to nurture and develop Singapore-based entrepreneurs and start-up companies involved in novel medical devices and technologies.