Senior Scientist - Bioinformatics

Caris Life Sciences

Caris Life Sciences

Tempe, AZ, USA
Posted on Jul 19, 2024

Position Summary

The Senior Scientist - Bioinformatics will develop, implement and maintain Caris NGS pipelines and related bioinformatics tools. As a senior member of the Caris Bioinformatics team, this role will work closely with our R&D, Clinical Operations, IT, and executive management to design and manage the analytic workflows and pipelines to support our whole exome, transcriptome, and genome assays.

Job Responsibilities

  • Responsible for the design and implementation of computational pipelines and workflows for the analysis, integration, and interpretation of diverse biologic data including genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data.

  • Implement bioinformatics strategies, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and scientific objectives.

  • Collaborate with research, clinical, and data scientists to identify computational needs, translate scientific and clinical questions into analytical workflows, and provide guidance for data processing, quality control, and statistical analysis.

  • Stay abreast of emerging bioinformatics tools, techniques, and best practices, and strategically incorporating them into the bioinformatics framework.

  • Ensure the timely delivery of high-quality bioinformatics results by implementing rigorous quality control and validation procedures.

  • Establish and maintain databases, data repositories, and analytical platforms to facilitate data integration, sharing, and access for internal and external stakeholders.

  • Collaborate with IT and software development teams to optimize computational infrastructure, cloud computing, and database systems to support bioinformatics data storage, analysis, and visualization.

  • Ensure compliance with relevant data protection regulations and ethics guidelines, promoting best practices for data management, privacy, and security.

  • Collaborate with internal stakeholders, external partners, and customers to provide technical expertise, foster collaborations, and contribute to the development of joint research projects.

Required Qualifications

  • PhD in bioinformatics, biostatistics, biomedical engineering, computer science or other related disciplines

  • Demonstrated capacity to apply principles and analytical methodologies in computational biology and bioinformatics to build and maintain large scale pipelines.

  • Extensive hands-on experience (5-8 years) with state-of-the-art bioinformatics tools, especially NGS and proteomic pipelines.

  • Knowledge and analytic skills managing bioinformatics data including FASTQ, BAM, and VCF

  • Good programming skills with Python, bash, and SQL

  • Demonstrated skills in statistical analysis and data visualization with statistical packages such as R, SAS, or SciPy

  • Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite, specifically Word, Excel, Outlook, and general working knowledge of Internet for business use.

  • Conditions of Employment: Individuals must successfully complete pre-employment process, which includes criminal background check, drug screening, and reference verification.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience with both laboratory and clinical data.

  • Familiarity with clinical trial design and clinical data analysis is highly desirable.

  • Strong verbal and written communication skills. Willingness to share and receive information and ideas from all levels of the organization in order to achieve the desired results.

Physical Demands

  • Must possess ability to sit, stand, and/or work at a computer for long periods of time

Training

  • All job specific, safety, and compliance training are assigned based on the job functions associated with this employee.

Other

  • This position requires periodic travel and some evenings, weekends and/or holidays.

  • Job may require after-hours response to emergency issues.

  • Periodically scheduled on-call may require after-hours response for technical emergencies not explicitly related to assigned job responsibilities.

  • At times may be required to work weekends/holidays.

This job description reflects management’s assignment of essential functions. Nothing in this job description restricts management’s right to assign or reassign duties and responsibilities to this job at any time.

Caris Life Sciences is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, status as a protected veteran, among other things, or status as a qualified individual with disability.