Research Associate II

Job Description

Job Summary:

• We are seeking a motivated Bioinformatics Research Associate II to join the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Core group to support genomic analyses of multiple therapeutic modalities within the Genomic Medicine Unit (GMU) CMC organization.
• The role is responsible for leading the analysis of gene therapy driven projects, interfaced within a cross-functional team, to develop and implement genomic analytical solutions for programs spanning precandidate selection through late phase clinical development.
• The ideal candidate will be expected to support end-to-end NGS analysis solutions, through analytical pipeline design and execution.
• Strong independent problem solving and troubleshooting skillsets are preferred.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Support computational needs for the development and validation of NGS-based assays.
• Work closely with a multi-disciplinary team of scientists and engineers to implement genomic analytical solutions for programs spanning precandidate selection through late phase clinical development.
• Develop, execute, and maintain NGS analysis pipelines for execution in cloud-based computational environments.
• Keep records of development work and testing in a GxP environment utilizing electronic notebook solutions.
• Represent the group at internal meetings.

Basic Qualifications:

• Degree in a relevant computer science discipline with a minimum of 3 years of relevant industry experience.
• Minimum of 1 year experience with NGS, spanning knowledge and hands-on dry-lab experience.
• Expertise in bioinformatics with a working understanding of genomic analysis solutions (e.g., FastQC, Bowtie2, SAMtools, NCBI BLAST+, Nextflow, etc.).
• Scripting experience in coding languages (e.g., bash, awk, Python, R, etc.).
• Understanding of NGS platforms, specifically those utilizing the synthesis by sequencing technique (i.e., Illumina platforms).
• Ability to work independently and adapt under aggressive and/or changing timelines.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Familiarity with the software development lifecycle (e.g., Git).
• Automated unit testing for test driven design (TDD).
• Familiarity with basic molecular biology techniques (e.g., ligation, PCR, and qPCR) as well as nucleic acid extraction and analysis techniques (e.g., Nanodrop, DNA fragment analyzers, ddPCR, etc.).
• Knowledge of and experience with other sequencing platforms (i.e., SMRT sequencing).
• Prior experience in leading the internalization of custom NGS analysis pipelines is highly preferred.
• Wet-lab method development experience to support NGS workflows.