Bioinformatician

Summary

Join a multidisciplinary team at Natera as a Bioinformatician to develop and apply bioinformatics methods to immuno-oncology clinical datasets. You will be responsible for developing computational tools, analyzing genomic sequencing data, and collaborating with other scientists. The ideal candidate will have a PhD or MS degree in a related field and experience analyzing genomic sequencing data from Illumina platforms and long-read nucleic acid datasets. Strong programming skills in Python or R are required, along with experience in UNIX shell scripting. This remote position offers competitive benefits, including comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans, and 401k benefits.

Requirements

• Great understanding of immunology and human genetics (understanding of oncology is preferred)
• Experience analyzing genomic sequencing data from Illumina platforms
• Experience analyzing long-read nucleic acid datasets such as PacBio or Oxford Nanopore
• Experience analyzing high-throughput RNA-seq data
• Familiarity with using and scripting in UNIX shell (e.g. Bash)
• Strong programming skills in common bioinformatics scripting languages (e.g. Python, R)
• Ability to collaborate and communicate with other scientists, researchers and clinicians
• Demonstrated project management skills and ability to produce readable, reproducible and documented code (e.g. Jupyter, R markdown, etc)
• Strong team-oriented work ethic with open, honest, and considerate communication skills
• PhD degree in bioinformatics, computational biology, statistics, immunology, or a related field; or MS degree with 3+ years of post-graduation experience in bioinformatics, biology, computational biology, statistics, immunology, or a related field

Responsibilities

• With the assistance of a multidisciplinary team, develop or enhance computational tools to predict antigenic somatic variants
• Assist bioinformaticians and data scientists in developing approaches to gain better understanding of T-cell receptor binding to MHC-peptide complexes
• Use internal and external genomics data sources to understand how somatic and germline variation impacts the immune system’s response to cancer
• Run and enhance established immune repertoire sequencing pipelines and workflows for NGS analysis in a clinical setting
• Prototype, develop, document, deploy, and support novel clinical DNA and RNA sequencing analysis approaches NGS analysis
• Benchmark new tools for sequencing data analysis and propose improvements
• Develop QC metrics, gold standard datasets and tools for systematically testing and evaluating the accuracy of newly developed assays and methods
• Collaborate with technical teams in specifying requirements for tools to enhance workflow efficiency, turnaround times and robustness
• Participate in internal research projects and external research collaborations
• Assist in preparing text and figures for manuscripts and external presentations
• Summarize results in written or oral reports for computational biologists, molecular biologists, clinicians, and internal researchers

Preferred Qualifications

• Immune repertoire analysis experience is a plus(e.g. Immcantation, MiXCR, TRUST4, immunarch, etc)
• Experience writing SQL queries for data retrieval is required is a plus
• Exposure to cancer genomics somatic variant calling is a plus
• Experience working with large external data sources such as IEDB, iReceptor, VDJdb, and others is a plus

Benefits

• Employee benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans for eligible employees and their dependents
• Additionally, Natera employees and their immediate families receive free testing in addition to fertility care benefits
• Other benefits include pregnancy and baby bonding leave, 401k benefits, commuter benefits and much more
• We also offer a generous employee referral program!