Bioinformatics Scientist (Contracted) - Greenlight Biosciences

GreenLight Biosciences is seeking a Bioinformatics Scientist to join the Data Science and Bioinformatics team. The candidate will partner closely with the Plant Health Discovery, Functional, and Science teams to deliver on key objectives by applying your knowledge of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), Genomics, Bioinformatics, and Biological Computing. In this role, you are expected to be integrally involved in early-stage Plant Health Discovery projects by leveraging your bioinformatics expertise through data analyses, scientific literature mining, visualization, workflow development, and analysis reports. The ideal candidate is a scientist-programmer with a background in pesticide product advancements, preferably fungicides, with a molecular biology and bioinformatics bent. Strong oral and written communication skills, combined with a robust scientific background, to convey complex RNAi concepts to a wide variety of scientific and non-scientific audiences are essential. As part of the Data Science team at GreenLight Biosciences, you will address the needs of scientists involved in discovery, spanning from research to production phases. 

Responsibilities: 

• Collaborate within highly cross-functional category teams to provide bioinformatics support, contributing to the science and MoA of first-of-their-kind RNAi products in the Plant Health space through in silico analyses. 

• Perform and translate bioinformatics analyses into intuitive visualizations and effective written communication to stakeholders.  

• Design, optimize, and implement automated bioinformatics workflows and novel algorithms to derive actionable, novel biological insights from a variety of biological data sets, including Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). 

• Code in programming languages such as Python, R, to implement tools and scripts for data manipulation, analysis, and visualization.  

• Stay up to date with the latest developments in bioinformatics, RNAi technology, regulatory sciences, and technology trends to drive innovation and excellence in the field.  

• Continuously align with reporting manager, peers, and stakeholders on priorities and best practices.  

• Partner closely with stakeholders on mining scientific literature, data analyses, and reports.  

• Follow Agile methodology for code development. 

• Clearly articulate and communicate results, solutions, and vision to peers and leaders. 

Required qualifications: 

• Ph.D. in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, or in related fields such as Molecular Biology, Agriculture, Plant Pathology, Genetics, Life Science, Biotechnology with a primary focus on biological computation, or a Master's degree with >=5 years of post-graduate experience in these fields. 

• >1 year of experience in hands-on bioinformatics analysis including algorithm, tool, and workflow development for NGS analysis.  

• >2 years of programming experience with Python and R, with shareable code repositories. 

• Experience with reproducible code frameworks such as JIRA, Confluence, and GitHub, and workflow management systems like Snakemake or NextFlow.  

• Demonstrated ability to present complex results, both verbally and in writing, to bioinformatics and non-bioinformatics audiences of all levels.  

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to translate biologists' scientific questions into analytical strategies and methods.  

• Strong familiarity with RNAi and fungicide product advancement science. 

• Familiarity with databases, resources, and software tools relevant to bioinformatics requirements. 

• Expertise in utilizing and configuring public and custom bioinformatics tools and workflows.  

• A biology-centric and data-oriented thought process.  

• Must be independently driven owning and seeing projects through to completion based on agreed upon deadlines.  

• Must possess a team-oriented working style, scientific curiosity with a problem-solving mindset, organizational skills, and an enthusiastic, collaborative spirit.  

• Ability to produce reproducible code with comprehensive documentation. 

• Demonstrated commitment to maintaining a high level of ownership and seeing assignments through to completion. 

• Strong stakeholder-oriented communication skills. 

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Post-PhD Academia or Industry experience.  

• Current or previous experience working on biopesticide or crop protection-related bioinformatics.  

• Excellent knowledge of NGS technologies and sequencing platforms such as Illumina, PacBio, and Nanopore. 

• Ability to independently perform analysis and report generation of different NGS workflows such as RNA-Seq, sRNA-Seq, dsRNA-Seq, and transcriptome analyses of both internal and public datasets. 

• Experience with high-performance computing environments including cloud infrastructures such as Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud (Azure preferred)  

• Enthusiasm and interest in unlocking novel areas of potential commercial value in a startup environment.