Job: Sr Staff Bioinformatics Scientist, Emerging Solutions

Job Description

Position Summary
 

The cost to sequence a human genome is rapidly decreasing and will approach $100 in the coming years. This is driving the creation of multi-omic data sets, population sequencing of multi-million sample human cohorts, gene expression profiles of millions of cells from a single sample, experiments to characterize the functional consequences of all possible variants in a gene, and surveys of the complete human immune repertoire… and this is just the beginning.

To derive value and insights from these incredibly deep and varied data sets, genomics has become an information science, requiring investment in modern data engineering, data science, and machine learning capabilities.  Applications range from personalized health care to genetics-informed drug discovery.

Towards this end, Illumina is enabling the creation of extremely large clinical-genomic datasets and pioneering the application of novel analytical methods, including artificial intelligence, to this data.  

The Sr Staff Bioinformatics Scientist, Emerging Solutions will lead the Singapore Emerging Solutions team.  This person will work with global colleagues and partners to establish novel genomic data resources, and apply those datasets with customers and partners to advance research, personalized medicine, and drug target discovery.  The Singapore Emerging Solutions team will own and operationalize partnerships in these application areas within the Asia Pacific region. 

Responsibilities: 

• Grow the Emerging Solutions team in Singapore. Hire, mentor and lead junior members of the team
• Help define the technical roadmap for Illumina’s emerging data offerings in collaboration with the global Emerging Solutions team
• Identify emerging data applications in genomics and the industry and academic collaborations and partnerships required to realize them
• Represent Illumina with customers and partners in emerging data applications in the Asia Pacific region
• Plan and execute on pilot studies with partners
• Work collaboratively with teammates, other teams within Illumina, and with external collaborators and partners to apply novel genomic data sets and tools to precision medicine and drug development
• Identify and accommodate global and local partner requirements that impact data sharing, and develop appropriate privacy-preserving solutions in collaboration with Emerging Solutions software engineering colleagues.
• Analyse and evaluate clinical-genomic datasets in the context of drug development, and work with data providers to better satisfy this need.  Evaluate, apply, and improve as necessary genomic analysis methods for this use case.
• Map Illumina’s and potential partners’ technical capabilities to the biopharmaceutical problem domain to identify opportunities and gaps.  Perform technical due diligence on potential partners.
• Drive development of components identified as gaps.  Integrate existing capabilities as needed to address industry needs.

Listed responsibilities are an essential, but not exhaustive list, of the usual duties associated with the position. Changes to individual responsibilities may occur due to business needs.

Requirements: 

• At least 5 years managing technical teams
• Experience working with customers, government partners, or standards bodies
• Strong proficiency in Python (or R) for data analysis and visualization.  (Jupyter)
• First-hand experience applying genomics to drug development or personalized medicine applications
• Software development expertise preferred (production quality code in an agile environment)
• Experience with database technologies (SQL & no-SQL) 
• Experience analyzing and managing large genomic data sets, ideally with linked clinical data.
• Population/statistical genomics experience 
• Experience with biomedical ontologies and knowledge graphs
• Familiarity with machine learning concepts, and ideally experience applying, troubleshooting, and improving ML algorithms in the biomedical domain
• Ability to distill and iterate on requirements in an emerging problem space
• Excellent communication skills and proven ability to articulate complex concepts to both technical and non-technical colleagues

All listed requirements are deemed as essential functions to this position; however, business conditions may require reasonable accommodations for additional task and responsibilities.

Experience/Education: 

• Typically requires a Master’s degree in Bioinformatics, Biological Sciences, Genetics, Genomics or related field and 8 years or relevant experience; or a PhD with 5 years’ experience; or equivalent experience.

Illumina believes that everyone has the ability to make an impact, and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer committed to providing employment opportunity regardless of sex, race, creed, color, gender, religion, marital status, domestic partner status, age, national origin or ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, sexual orientation, pregnancy, military or veteran status, citizenship status, and genetic information.