Bioinformatician II

Tanaq Management Services LLC•Atlanta, GA

just now•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a highly motivated Bioinformatician II to support ongoing projects within public health and the federal government. The ideal candidate will have experience analyzing biological data in the areas of phylogenetics, molecular evolution, recombination analysis, and whole genome analysis. This position will involve supporting various laboratory projects, including the development of new vaccines, the study of infectious diseases, molecular epidemiology, and surveillance. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to collaborate with various agencies and contribute to important research making a difference in the fight against disease. The Bioinformatician II is responsible for R-programming and experience in Matlab applications. This role will collaborate with scientists across various disciplines to extract meaningful insights from complex datasets and contribute to ongoing research projects. This is a hybrid remote role based in Atlanta, GA. Some onsite work will be required at the client’s location in Atlanta, GA; the frequency will be determined based on client need. This is a short-term assignment.

Requirements

Minimum 4 years of experience in the capacity of a bioinformatician.
Proficiency in R programming for statistical analysis preferred.
Experience in Matlab applications preferred.
Strong attention to detail.
Ability to work independently and as part of a team in a fast-paced setting.
Ability to work with a diverse interdisciplinary team.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Effective organization skills.
Ability to obtain government clearance.
Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship, now or at any time in the future.
Master’s of Science degree in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology or related field with 4+ years of related experience required. PhD in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology or related field preferred.

Nice To Haves

Experience with automation support; QMS & CLIA support; ELIMS integrations; Testing and curating new technologies, e.g., Nanopore; website development; communications and user experience preferred.
Strong experience using applications such as BLAST/Megan, metagenefinder, QIIME, MG-RAST, and 16S databases such RDP and Greengenes preferred.
Experience with de novo assembly and reference mapping preferred.
Experience with RocheAVA, CLCbio, VIP, and VarScan software packages preferred.
Ability to develop and implement bioinformatic pipelines to automate data analysis workflows preferred.
Advanced experience with comparative genomics methods, including SNP/indel detection, gene structure comparisons, gene absence/presence determination, and protein sequence comparisons preferred.
Previous experience in public health and molecular epidemiologic research, preferred.
Experience working for the federal government or in a public health setting preferred.

Responsibilities

Assist in bioinformatics/computational biology projects including the creation and dissemination of NGS data.
Support the development of novel and standardized bioinformatics analysis workflows (e.g., Nextflow, Snakemake, custom scripts/pipelines) for viral vaccine preventable diseases generated from next-generation sequencing platforms (e.g. Illumina, Element, Oxford Nanopore).
Support modification and enhancement of processes and tools of existing bioinformatic workflows to accommodate whole genome data.
Provide technical assistance to integrate bioinformatics workflows with existing platforms in customer’s programs.
Develop and/or use innovative methodologies and techniques; search, synthesize, and interpret information relevant to public health.
Review and analyze studies and projects assessing major and/or sensitive public health issues in order to make recommendations for processes, procedures and/or policies related to public health programs, practices and research.
Support in collecting and organizing information to help shape the strategic direction necessary for the customer to achieve its mission goals and objectives.
Provide support with pertinent quality-related duties, including drafting and revision of standardized operating procedures, drafting and completion of method verifications and validations for next-generation sequencing methods and analysis pipelines.
Assist in and lead projects in bioinformatics and computational biology.
Provide data analysis support for sequencing requests through the Genome Sequence Lab.
Conduct Bioinformatics Activities in support of several projects being undertaken in support of Global Polio Eradication Program.
Perform assembly & Mapping activities, including genome assembly services for all sequencing platforms in the GSL (Sanger, Roche454, Illumina, Ion Torrent, MinION, and PacBio).
Provide single platform assembly using software packages to include CLCbio, Celera Assembler, MIRA, velvet, and BWA.
Conduct Genomics analysis such as SNP/indel detection, gene structure comparisons, gene absence/presence determination, and protein sequence comparisons utilizing software packages such as kSNP, BLAST, and custom software.
Perform variant detection techniques, including Amplicon or Deep Sequencing, to determine consensus sequences.
Conduct Metagenomics techniques to identify species of microorganisms from an uncultured DNA sample utilizing BLAST/Megan, metagenefinder, QIIME, MG-RAST, and 16S databases utilizing RDP and Greengenes software packages.
Provides legacy sequencing data retrieval.
Analyze genetic sequencing data utilizing new methodologies or existing techniques that have been revised
Collaborate on genetic analysis projects and studies with internal and external partners.
Assist laboratory scientists (with varying levels of computational expertise) in the design and implementation of bioinformatics tools that support the automation of data analysis, especially for next-generation sequencing data and large data sets.
Advise senior scientists on applying a variety of bioinformatics analysis tools used to compare and categorize polio and picornavirus isolates and virus populations.
Request NGS Sequencing for Illumina MiSeq and NovaSeq; PacBio RSII and Sequel; Oxford Nanopore MiniON.