Senior Bioinformatics Engineer

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At Exact Sciences, we’re helping change how the world prevents, detects and guides treatment for cancer. We give patients and clinicians the clarity needed to make confident decisions when they matter most. Join our team to find a purpose-driven career, an inclusive culture, and robust benefits to support your life while you’re working to help others.

Position Overview

The Senior Bioinformatics Engineer position contributes to the development and support of both on-market products and new product development. This position will participate independently as well as have opportunities to lead project teams in designing, delivering, and supporting technology platforms at Exact. This position is self-driven, working in collaboration with others on one or more projects which are complex in scope. Working in a team setting, this role will contribute to the design and implementation of new software solutions to process and interpret Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and other types of assay data for the purpose of cancer diagnostics.

This is a high-impact role that will be involved in producing software to orchestrate and execute analysis workflows as well as building new bioinformatics and analytical tools that operate directly on scientific data. Leveraging the latest data platforms and technologies this role will build cloud-based solutions ready for a production environment and will work to provide both strategic and operational excellence while helping to develop the overall technology strategy. The Sr Bioinformatics Engineer will support and participate in the development of timelines and plans for new assignments/projects. As a technical expert with deep knowledge and thorough understanding of the bioinformatics and software engineering, this role provides technical guidance and mentorship to junior engineers in the Bioinformatics group.

Essential Duties

Include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Collaboration and Communication:

  • Collaborate with platform owners and end-users to gather requirements and priorities for continuous software delivery and value creation.

  • Lead project technical decisions, system development, and timely delivery.

  • Communicate status updates, progress reports, and error messages to the wet lab team and upper management, ensuring transparency and accountability.

  • Coordinate production runtime operation and support of cloud-based platforms.

  • Work closely with remote technical teams and collaborate effectively.

  • Proactively manage project deadlines and drive results with a focus on quality.

• Technical Expertise and innovation:

  • Act as subject matter expert in core team and/or cross-functional meetings.

  • Write test plans and user acceptance testing cases for quality assurance.

  • Develop, optimize, and maintain real-time data visualizations.

  • Implement statistical algorithms in collaboration with biostatisticians.

  • Design and implement data storage solutions for experimental data and analysis results.

  • Contribute to the building and maintenance of cloud infrastructure for data analysis pipelines.

  • Develop automation solutions for software operations, including Bioinformatics pipelines and report generation.

  • Contribute to the development of software tools supporting bioinformatics workflow operations.

  • Design and implement web server application infrastructure as needed.

  • Explore innovative methods to optimize data sharing and processing efficiency.

• Team Collaboration and Mentorship:

  • Participate actively in cross-functional teams, driving collaborative projects within time and budget constraints.

  • Mentor junior team members in technical and functional areas.

  • Share expertise by creating and maintaining resources for the team.

  • Contribute to the overall strategic technology roadmap.

• Standards and Compliance:

  • Build design and coding standards for consistency across applications.

  • Uphold company mission and values through accountability, innovation, integrity, quality, and teamwork.

  • Support and comply with the company’s Quality Management System policies and procedures.

  • Maintain regular and reliable attendance.

  • Ability to act with an inclusion mindset and model these behaviors for the organization.

• Uphold company mission and values through accountability, innovation, integrity, quality, and teamwork.

• Display a strong sense of intellectual curiosity.

• Exercise discretion and independent judgement within broadly defined practices and policies in selecting methods, techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining and interpreting results; analyzing data and presenting findings in a professional and knowledgeable manner.

• Demonstrate excellent critical thinking, analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities.

• Demonstrate excellent team-working skills with ability to complete collaborative projects on time with a strong attention to detail.

• Exercise excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to communicate complex ideas, information, and recommendations clearly and frequently with all levels of the organization; including team members, project team members (core and extended), functional managers, clinical lab, and other stakeholders.

• Ability to adapt to changes in priorities and work towards challenging goals in a fast-moving environment where on-time delivery of results is a high priority. Support and comply with the company’s Quality Management System policies and procedures.

• Maintain regular and reliable attendance.

• Ability to act with an inclusion mindset and model these behaviors for the organization.

• Ability to work designated schedule.

• Ability to work on a mobile device, tablet, or in front of a computer screen and/or perform typing for approximately 95% of a typical working day.

• Ability and means to travel 10% between local Exact Sciences locations.

• Ability to travel 5% of working time away from work location, may include overnight/weekend/international travel.

• Applicants must be currently authorized to work in country where work will be performed on a full or part-time basis. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment visas at this time.

Minimum Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Sciences, or field as outlined in the essential duties; or Bachelor’s Degree in Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Sciences, or field as outlined in the essential duties plus 2 years of relevant experience in lieu of Master’s degree.

• 4+ years of experience in custom software development.

• 3+ years of experience in designing and deploying highly scalable cloud-based solutions (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google).

• Proficient with most popular software languages and technology stacks.

• Demonstrated ability working with DevOps and cloud automation.

• Demonstrated ability to teach others on advanced Agile practices.

• Demonstrated ability to perform the Essential Duties of the position with or without accommodation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree.

• 6+ years of experience in custom software development.

• 5+ years of experience in designing and deploying systems leveraging a micro-service architecture.

• 4+ years of experience with web development and scientific programming in Python.

• 3+ years of experience with SQL database management.

• Advanced understanding in the use of Apache Spark for data processing.

• Advanced understanding in the design and operation of highly secure custom software solutions.

• Recent experience working with the following: Tableau, Python, SQL, Javascript, Django).

• Experience in direct management and expertise in associate professional development.

• Strong understanding of machine learning.

• 3+ years of experience working with Databricks.

• Strong working knowledge of the information technology (IT) control requirements for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations.

• Familiarity with Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), and clinical and diagnostic test development.

• Experience with PDP (Product Development Process) and/or Cancer Genomics.

Our success relies on the experiences and perspectives of a diverse team, and Exact Sciences fosters a culture where all employees can develop personally and professionally with a sense of respect and belonging. If you require an accommodation, please contact us here.

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