Career Profile

Staff Engineer & Computational Biologist

Currently at Cloudflare R&D, architecting AI and distributed compute infrastructure. Formerly Staff Engineer at GRAIL, specializing in machine learning classifiers and bioinformatics pipelines.

I specialise in algorithmic bioinformatics, solving "big data" problems in the life sciences—ranging from real-time genomic epidemiology to genetic marker featurisation. By leveraging data sketching, graph theory, and global-scale distributed systems, I build the high-performance software necessary for the next generation of genomic research.

Employment Record

Senior System Engineer

2026 - Present

Cloudflare

Staff Software Engineer

2025 - 2026

Human Native

Staff Research Engineer

2024 - 2025

Prima Mente (formerly CFDX)

Staff Software Engineer

2023 - 2024

GRAIL

Senior Software Engineer

2021 - 2023

GRAIL

Postdoctoral Researcher

2019 - 2021

University of Birmingham

Computational Biologist

2017 - 2019

The Science And Technology Facilities Council

Postdoctoral Research Associate

2016 - 2017

University of Liverpool

Skills & Strengths

Languages
CC++GoJavaScriptPythonTypeScript
Bioinformatics
ARTICAntibiotic ResistanceBioinformaticsGenomicsMetagenomicsNanoporeResistome
Infrastructure
GroovyShell
Data & ML
Jupyter NotebookMinhashSketching

Software, Papers & Funding

Selected Papers

5295 citations, h-index 20. Please click on the abstract links for more information. Data fetched from Semantic Scholar on 22.4.2026.

  1. When the levee breaks: a practical guide to sketching algorithms for processing the flood of genomic data
    W. Rowe2019Genome Biology
  2. Indexed variation graphs for efficient and accurate resistome profiling
    W. Rowe, M. Winn2018bioRxiv
  3. Streaming histogram sketching for rapid microbiome analytics
    Will P. M. Rowe, A. Carrieri, Cristina Alcon-Giner, Shabhonam Caim, Alexander G. Shaw, Kathleen Sim, J. S. Kroll, Lindsay J Hall, Edward O. Pyzer-Knapp, Martyn D. Winn, Will P. M. Rowe, A. Paola2018Microbiome

Teaching, Leadership & Speaking

Genomics Masters module

2016-2017

Designed and taught content (lectures and workshops) for a module of the LIFE708 Masters degree at the University of Liverpool

Bioinformatics supervision

2016-2017

Provided bioinformatic supervision for PhD students at the University of Liverpool

Bioinformatics workshops

2016-2018

Organised and ran weekly bioinformatics workshops for the institute

HiPy

2016-2018

Assisted at university-wide Python workshops as an instructor