Scientist III, Bioinformatics Full-time

Job Title

As part of the Thermo Fisher Scientific team, you'll discover meaningful work that makes a positive impact on a global scale. Join our colleagues in bringing our Mission to life every single day to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. We provide our global teams with the resources needed to achieve individual career goals while helping to take science a step beyond by developing solutions for some of the world's toughest challenges, like protecting the environment, making sure our food is safe, or helping find cures for cancer.

Job Description

As part of the Bioinformatics R&D team within the Clinical Next Generation Sequencing Division you will support primer design and the development of targeted sequencing panels, as well as building pipelines and algorithms for next-generation sequencing (NGS). As a leader in life science technologies, our team empowers scientists to harness genomics to drive scientific discovery and advance clinical research in personalized medicine.

Location

This is a fully onsite role based in Carlsbad, CA or South San Francisco, CA.

A Day in the Life

• Design assays for custom targeted sequencing panels for external and internal researchers
• Understand key scientific questions and translate them into effective assay design strategies
• Partner with external customers to understand project requirements and deliver high-quality design solutions that meet their needs
• Collaborate cross-functionally with molecular biologists, product management, and other bioinformatics and software team members to support new product development, launch, troubleshooting, and optimization
• Develop, maintain, and operate bioinformatics pipelines for assay design, data mining and analysis
• Improve assay designs through iterative analysis of sequencing data and development of heuristics, optimization methods, and algorithms
• Evaluate, implement, and scale new technologies and methods to optimize and automate pipelines for primer design

Keys to Success

Education

• PhD in bioinformatics, statistics, genomics, computational biology, computer science or related field; or
• MS with 3+ years of relevant industry experience

Experience

• Proficiency in Python and shell scripting
• Hands-on experience with bioinformatics production systems
• Experience with targeted NGS sequencing, Ampliseq technology or PCR primer design is highly preferred
• Experience with sequence analysis tools (BLAST, MAFFT/Clustal, Bowtie/BWA, samtools/bedtools) and strong understanding of genomic databases and annotations (GenBank/RefSeq, ENSEMBL, UCSC)
• Working knowledge of statistical modeling, optimization, or machine learning applied to genomic or assay-design data
• Experience applying modeling or machine learning approaches to support assay performance prediction, off-target assessment, QC flagging, or design-rule optimization is preferred

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• Excellent communication and organizational skills
• Self-motivated, collaborative, and detail-oriented
• Strong problem-solving and troubleshooting skills
• Commitment to delivering high-quality results with integrity and professionalism

Other

• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future
• Must be able to pass a comprehensive background check and drug screen

Compensation and Benefits

The salary range estimated for this position based in California is $95,900.00–$127,800.00. This position may also be eligible to receive a variable annual bonus based on company, team, and/or individual performance results in accordance with company policy. We offer a comprehensive Total Rewards package that our U.S. colleagues and their families can count on, which includes:

• A choice of national medical and dental plans, and a national vision plan, including health incentive programs
• Employee assistance and family support programs, including commuter benefits and tuition reimbursement
• At least 120 hours paid time off (PTO), 10 paid holidays annually, paid parental leave (3 weeks for bonding and 8 weeks for caregiver leave), accident and life insurance, and short- and long-term disability in accordance with company policy
• Retirement and savings programs, such as our competitive 401(k) U.S. retirement savings plan
• Employees' Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) offers eligible colleagues the opportunity to purchase company stock at a discount