Bioinformatics Analyst

Description

The Military & Veteran’s Health Operation of Leidos is currently looking for a Bioinformatics Analyst to support biological research at the Biological Defense Research Directorate (BDRD) at the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC) in Frederick, MD. The BDRD within NMRC facilitates biological research for the rapid detection of infectious diseases of global importance and the enhancement of global disease surveillance for early pathogen detection and response. The Bioinformatics Analyst plays an important role in the quality control, assembly, annotation, and dissemination of microbial (bacterial and viral) genomes in a military medical research setting. While the primary task for the Bioinformatics Analyst is to assist in microbial genome assemblies and downstream analyses to a complete (polished genome) standard, they will also contribute to other tasks such as analysis of RNAseq data and bioinformatic pipeline development and testing.

Primary Responsibilities

The ideal candidate shall:

• Manipulate and process raw sequencing data from in-house Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) platforms (MiSeq, NextSeq500, Ion S5, PacBio, MinION), microarrays, publicly accessible databases, and/or external collaborators.

• Perform quality control, assembly, annotation, etc.

• Integrate high-throughput data from multiple sequencing platforms.

• Use a variety of bioinformatic tools and potentially develop new software applications to solve salient problems in the field of genomics.

• Download, install, and benchmark open-source software packages from a variety of sources (GitHub, SourceForge, etc.).

• Assist staff scientists in summarizing research data, preparing posters, and/or presenting results via conference presentations, scientific publications, or project reports.

• Attend internal meetings and teleconferences as well as external meetings with collaborators and stakeholders when deemed appropriate.

• Contribute to technical reports, presentations and manuscripts for publication.

• Assist with appropriate training of other personnel.

• Work is to be performed on a government installation. The normal work week is Monday - Friday 0800 to 1630.

• Candidates may need to work evenings and weekends on very rare occasions.

Basic Qualifications

• Candidates must have completed a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree from an accredited US university, or international university of equivalent standard, in Bioinformatics, Computer Science (combined with experience or education in biology or bioinformatics), Computational Biology, Mathematics or a closely related area.

• Candidates must have at least 2-4 years of hands-on experience in Bioinformatics.

• Possess programming skills in languages such as JAVA, PERL, PYTHON, and statistical software such as R or R Studio.

• Maintain a familiarity with next generation sequencing and microarrays.

• Have excellent verbal and writing communications skills.

• Be able to think independently and must have excellent problem-solving skills.

• The candidate will be required to acquire, at a minimum, a SECRET classification access level. Preference will be given to a candidate who already has this clearance level.

• Due to Federal contract requirements, US citizenship is required.

• Strong background in genomics, bioinformatics computer science, bacterial or viral genetics, and/or computational biology.

• Be able to perform under deadlines and in austere environments.

• Must be able to sit extensive hours and lift 25 lbs. without assistance

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a military medical research laboratory is a plus.

• Ability to work well independently with little to no supervision.

Naval Health East - NHE

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.