Scientific Assistant- Bioinformatics

Washington State University • Pullman, WA

2d • $3,751 - $5,398 • Onsite

About The Position

Join a dynamic and collaborative research team where you will explore how the microbiome, host genetics, and immune system shape atopic diseases and related biological questions. As a Scientific Assistant specializing in computational biology, bioinformatics, and data analysis, you will play a central role as the lab’s bioinformatics expert, driving high-impact research through reproducible analyses, pipeline development, and organized data and code management. In this role, you will help maintain secure, well-documented research data systems, analyze sequencing and multi-omics datasets, and contribute to manuscripts and grant outputs. You will also support and mentor lab members by onboarding them to computational workflows and promoting best practices.

Requirements

• A Bachelor’s degree in computational biology, bioinformatics, genomics, microbiology, biology, statistics, computer science, data science, or engineering discipline or a related field and three (3) years of progressively responsible related professional research experience. Any combination of relevant education and experience may be substituted for the educational requirement on a year-for-year basis.
• A Master’s degree in an appropriate related scientific or engineering discipline may be substituted for up to one year of the required work experience.
• Minimum of 3 years of relevant experience in computational biology, bioinformatics, genomics, biological data analysis, or related research support.
• Demonstrated experience analyzing biological or biomedical datasets using R, Python, command-line tools, and/or other relevant computational platforms.
• Experience working in Linux/Unix environments and managing files, scripts, and analyses on shared computing systems or high-performance computing resources.
• Strong organizational and time-management skills, with the ability to manage multiple projects, timelines, and data-analysis requests simultaneously.
• Ability to maintain clear documentation of code, analyses, workflows, data organization, and project decisions to support reproducible research.
• Ability to communicate computational methods, results, assumptions, and limitations clearly to both computational and non-computational collaborators.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and collaboratively in a research environment.
• Commitment to responsible data handling, data security, and compliance with institutional policies for research data access and use.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree in computational biology, bioinformatics, genomics, statistics, computer science, data science, microbiology, or a related field.
• Experience with next-generation sequencing data analysis, microbiome/metagenomic analysis, amplicon sequencing, shotgun metagenomics, genomics, transcriptomics, multi-omics integration, or related biological data types.
• Experience developing, maintaining, or applying reproducible workflows using workflow managers, structured pipeline frameworks, containers, or cloud/HPC environments.
• Experience with Git/GitHub or other version-control systems.
• Experience with statistical modeling, machine learning, data visualization, and/or multi-omics integration.
• Familiarity with human-subjects research data, controlled-access datasets, data-use agreements, or data security and access-control requirements.
• Experience mentoring, training, or onboarding students, junior staff, or collaborators in computational methods.
• Experience preparing figures, tables, methods text, technical documentation, or analysis reports for manuscripts, grants, or presentations.

Responsibilities

• Play a central role as the lab’s bioinformatics expert, driving high-impact research through reproducible analyses, pipeline development, and organized data and code management.
• Help maintain secure, well-documented research data systems.
• Analyze sequencing and multi-omics datasets.
• Contribute to manuscripts and grant outputs.
• Support and mentor lab members by onboarding them to computational workflows and promoting best practices.

Benefits

• paid sick and vacation leave
• paid holidays
• medical, dental, life and disability insurance package for employees and dependents
• retirement
• deferred compensation
• optional supplemental retirement accounts
• training and development
• employee tuition waiver

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level