Postdoctoral Fellow (Data Engineering & AI/ML)

The Geneva Foundation • Bethesda, MD

9d

About The Position

The Postdoctoral Fellow provides assistance to the Principal Investigator, Co-Investigators, and research staff, including research project coordination, data management, regulatory and administrative support, and project close-out assistance. The role also supports enrollment and protocol adherence when applicable, as well as monitoring visits.

The fellow will contribute to a multi-institution research collaboration with Stanford, Johns Hopkins, the Veteran Affairs (VA), and the Department of War (DoW) to build a sleep foundation model. The project uses self-supervised learning on large-scale physiological sleep-study data to generate representations (embeddings) that may help forecast future health risks and uncover patterns not captured by traditional sleep-scoring metrics.

The position focuses on designing and deploying scalable applications and data pipelines for large-scale research, including ETL workflows for multimodal datasets and infrastructure supporting machine-learning models. The fellow will contribute to data integrity, technical documentation, research analysis and dissemination, regulatory support, team communication, and mentoring or technical oversight of less-experienced team members. Compensation is $36.00 per hour; salaries are determined based on external market data, internal equity, and the candidate’s related knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Requirements

• PhD or MD required.
• Five or more years of experience with multimodal data analysis.
• Proven experience with signal processing, such as time-series biosensor data.
• Hands-on experience with version control systems such as Git and the ability to work in a collaborative coding environment.
• Experience with cloud computing, or a strong desire to learn it, including managing cloud-native data warehouses and establishing ETL pipelines.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, multidisciplinary, multi-site team environment, including asynchronous collaboration.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.
• Organized, attentive to detail, and able to maintain a positive, friendly, and professional demeanor.
• Ability to adapt to changing priorities and interact with employees, clients, and sponsors at all levels.
• Ability to exercise independent judgment in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment with strict deadlines and manage multiple projects.
• At least intermediate-level computer skills, including Excel and other Microsoft Office software.

Nice To Haves

• One to two years of medical research project-management experience is strongly desired, preferably with the Department of Defense.
• Strong knowledge of sleep science.
• Familiarity with machine-learning workflows, including model development, model tuning, and deploying models at scale.
• Knowledge of military systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy scalable front-end applications and back-end data pipelines for large-scale research.
• Build ETL pipelines to ingest multimodal datasets, including wearables, data cross-referenced with EHRs, PSGs, and subjective sleep metrics, and support efficient storage, retrieval, and processing of datasets exceeding one million records.
• Support development of scalable infrastructure for advanced machine-learning models using physiological features and sleep microarchitectures.
• Optimize application performance and scalability through performance tuning, code refactoring, and database optimization.
• Stay informed about industry trends, academic literature, and technologies in data engineering, cloud architecture, and machine learning to improve the lab’s technical capabilities.
• Ensure data integrity throughout engineering workflows and assist with Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), analytical frameworks, and technical documentation.
• Communicate with leadership, advise on technical processes, and curate progress reports.
• Provide technical support and oversight to less-experienced team members.
• Assist with regulatory support, Data Sharing Agreements, and other project documentation.
• Collaborate with the Principal Investigator, Co-Investigators, and research team in conducting the study.
• Contribute to drafting and submitting abstracts, manuscripts, and reports for dissemination.
• Prepare research progress reports as required.
• Analyze data and write up findings.
• Present complex information effectively to a range of audiences.
• Provide data-management assistance.
• Provide project close-out support.
• Assist the Principal Investigator, Co-Investigators, and research staff with research activities.
• Support enrollment targets when applicable, protocol adherence, and monitoring visits.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree