---
title: 'Global Head of Sales (Zurich) at Rivia'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/global-head-of-sales-zurich-rivia-zurich-vv8nahsp6gdn'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-14'
---

# Global Head of Sales (Zurich) at Rivia

- **Company:** Rivia
- **Location:** Zurich, Switzerland
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/rivia/am9icG9zdDoUMRIb5q-ca4xgcAmArhuQ

## Job description

## About Rivia

[Rivia](http://rivia.com/) is a technology company building a data engine that powers the future of clinical trial intelligence. Rivia was founded on the belief that new drugs can be brought to market more successfully with a fraction of today's capital.

Biotechs are the source of most therapeutic innovation, yet clinical development is constantly constrained by fragmented data and outdated tooling.  Rivia unifies clinical trial data at scale through a core engine built as a reusable intelligence layer, comprising hundreds of configurations and trial-specific logic, independent of source structure. This vertical stack of data engine, workflows, and agents creates a distinct advantage in how trials are operated.

Over the past two years, European and US based biotechs running global clinical trials on Rivia have demonstrated measurable impact, from earlier understanding of therapeutic potential to significantly more efficient trial execution. In March 2026, Rivia raised its $15M Series A led by Earlybird Venture Capital.

Rivia’s ambition is to become the standard infrastructure for modern drug development, transforming how trials are executed end-to-end.

## The Role

Rivia's first Head of Sales, owning sales strategy and team performance across Europe and the US, spanning Zurich and a new Boston pod, and reporting directly to the CEO. This is a 0 to 1 build: standing up the sales engine, developing the team, and establishing the playbook as the company scales. It's a rare seat, the first sales leadership hire at a company that just closed its Series A, with real biotech and pharma customers already on the platform. The team is around five people today, and this role leads its growth from here, staying personally involved in the biggest deals while hiring and coaching the team around them.

Working Model This role is based in our Zurich office, with occasional travel to Boston.

What Excites You

- Ownership of Rivia's first sales leadership seat, shaping how the company sells rather than inheriting a playbook already set
- Real influence: compensation plans, hiring bar, and sales processes built from scratch, with direct input into commercial strategy
- A technical, scientific buyer, biotech and pharma clinical trial teams, that rewards genuine domain credibility over generic SaaS selling
- Building and leading a distributed team across Zurich and a new Boston pod, with a clear path to a larger organization as Rivia scales
- Staying close to the deals that matter most, working the biggest accounts personally rather than only managing from a distance

## Responsibilities

- Own the Sales strategy and team's performance across Zurich and Boston, including pipeline, forecasting, and revenue delivery
- Build and run the sales process from scratch: stages, exit criteria, CRM discipline, and forecasting cadence
- Personally engage in the biggest and most strategic deals, selling directly into biotech and pharma clinical buyers
- Hire, ramp up, and coach the sales team as it grows, setting and holding the hiring bar
- Report directly to the CEO, with regular input into commercial strategy and planning

What Excites Us

- Has personally built and grown a sales team, and built the team or its sales process from scratch rather than inheriting them
- Has personally sold clinical-trial or biotech software into biotech and pharma buyers, not adjacent healthcare or generic SaaS
- Comfortable being both a seller and a manager: closes deals personally while coaching and developing a team
- Experienced in pipeline management and forecasting, fluent in metrics like win rate, sales cycle length, and CAC
- Comfortable managing a distributed team across time zones

Bonus / Nice to Haves

- Existing network inside biotech and pharma clinical development, with warm relationships to bring to the pipeline
- Experience selling to both emerging biotech and large pharma buyers
- Multilingual or multi-market experience across Europe and the US

## Our Values

At Rivia, we are committed to excellence, continuous learning, and the success of both our customers and our team. If you are driven to exceed targets, eager to shape the future of clinical trials, and passionate about making a meaningful difference in the biotech industry, Rivia is the place for you.

- In it to Win it: Approach every challenge with determination, resilience, and a drive, aiming for the best outcomes and solutions.
- Embrace change: We see change as an opportunity for growth, innovation, and improvement, continuously evolving to stay one step ahead.
- Why not?: Asking why not, instead of why, allows us to show our curiosity, allowing us to challenge assumptions and explore new possibilities.
- Find the gap: We are curious and we proactively approach identifying opportunities and solving problems before they arise.
- Collective accountability: We are one team, on one mission and we are committed to shared responsibilities and mutual support, enabling trust and collaboration.
- Value add solutions: Know better. Act better. We are dedicated to delivering meaningful and impactful results.

## About Rivia

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Rivia builds a unified intelligence layer for clinical trials, using AI agents to transform fragmented trial data into structured, actionable insights for biotechs and pharmaceutical companies.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A)
- **Headquarters**: Zurich, Switzerland
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Erik Scalfaro (CEO), Tiago Kieliger (CTO), Henk Streefkerk (Chief Medical Officer)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Healthcare IT / Clinical Trial Intelligence
- **Target customers**: Biotech and pharmaceutical companies running clinical trials (B2B, Enterprise)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To be the leading unified clinical trial data platform, driving therapeutic innovation through the power of technology. The company’s vision is to help bring new therapies to market at a fraction of today’s cost.

## Products & Services
- **Rivia Core Intelligence Layer**: Unifies fragmented clinical trial data from any vendor or file into a single, structured foundation mapped to protocol logic, visits, and endpoints. Serves as the base for all workflows and agents. [rivia.com](https://www.rivia.com/)
- **Rivia Detect (Agentic Data Quality)**: AI agents that continuously run clinical checks across all data, cluster issues into root causes, propose corrective actions, and automate resolution workflows (e.g., drafting queries, preparing site communication). [rivia.com](https://www.rivia.com/)
- **Rivia Spark (Visual Intelligence)**: A natural-language interface that transforms user questions into dynamic graphs and cohorts, enabling instant data exploration. [rivia.com](https://www.rivia.com/)
- **Rivia Spark Patient Profile Assistant**: An AI-powered conversational agent embedded in the Patient Profile to answer questions about individual patients regarding adverse events, biomarkers, visits, and trends. [rivia.com](https://www.rivia.com/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metrics**:
    - **Total Funding**: $18.2M ([linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/rivia-sa))
        - Series A (March 2026): $15M led by Earlybird Venture Capital
        - Seed Round (June 2024): $3.2M led by Speedinvest
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Earlybird Venture Capital (Lead, Series A), Speedinvest (Lead, Seed)
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 66.7% year-over-year to 22 employees, with a 500% increase in job postings year-over-year. The platform has been adopted by European and US biotechs running global clinical trials, demonstrating measurable impact in trial execution efficiency and therapeutic understanding.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Unified data layer**: Rivia’s platform ingests data from any vendor or file format, harmonizing it into reusable, trial-specific models—solving a major fragmentation problem in clinical trials.
- **Agentic AI**: The platform deploys specialized AI agents for data quality, visual intelligence, and patient profiling, moving beyond simple dashboards to autonomous workflow execution.
- **Speed of deployment**: Rivia claims customers can go live in under 20 days by leveraging existing data access methods and automated integration. [rivia.com](https://www.rivia.com/)
- **Deep domain expertise**: Founded by a team combining technical and medical expertise (CEO, CTO, and Chief Medical Officer), giving the product credibility in a highly regulated industry.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling the platform**: Growing the team across engineering, AI, sales, and people functions to expand product capabilities and customer reach.
- **Embedding intelligence**: Continuing to develop and refine AI agents that operate across the entire clinical trial lifecycle.
- **Expanding market presence**: Building on existing traction with European and US biotechs to capture a larger share of the clinical trial software market.

## Why Work Here
- **Impactful mission**: Employees are directly involved in accelerating the development of new therapies and getting better treatments to patients faster. [rivia.com](https://www.rivia.com/careers)
- **Culture of ownership and collaboration**: Employee testimonials highlight growth, ownership, and a collaborative environment that encourages continuous learning and innovation. [rivia.com](https://www.rivia.com/careers)
- **Fast-growing startup**: With 66.7% headcount growth, 500% growth in job postings, and a recent $15M Series A, the company is in a strong growth phase.
- **Work policy**: Hybrid model, with primary offices in Zurich, Switzerland, and a smaller presence in Blandford, Massachusetts. Typical time on-site is expected. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rivia)
- **Open roles (as of recent data)**: Senior Frontend (Full-stack) Engineer, Senior AI Engineer, Quality Assurance (Compliance) Manager, Head of People, Account Executive, Senior Backend (Full-stack) Engineer, and Solutions Engineer. [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/rivia-sa)

## Sources
1. [rivia.com](https://www.rivia.com/)
2. [rivia.com/about](https://www.rivia.com/about)
3. [rivia.com/careers](https://www.rivia.com/careers)
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/rivia)
5. [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/rivia-sa)
6. [jobs.gem.com/rivia](https://jobs.gem.com/rivia)

## Other roles at Rivia

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