The Research Informatics Solutions (RIS) group within the University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) is hiring two full-time Bioinformatics Analysts to support basic biomedical and applied clinical genetic research for the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology (LM&P) at the University of Minnesota. The analysts in these positions will conduct cutting-edge bioinformatics analyses in close collaboration with a diverse set of biomedical labs within the LM&P department, as well as design and implement clinical genomic analysis pipelines for the Molecular Diagnostic Lab. Successful candidates will join the five-person LM&P team, a subset of the twelve-person RIS group at MSI. The RIS group was formed in 2011, leveraging MSI’s rich computational environment to foster innovative bioinformatics collaboration with researchers across the University and Minnesota. The RIS-LM&P informatics team has partnered with LM&P to support research and diagnostics since 2013. We work with researchers and clinicians on a broad variety of projects that will impact human health, including cancer, immunology, neurology, and epidemiology. We have opportunities to explore novel methods and tools such as single-cell and spatial transcriptomic platforms. We work together as a team to help our partners in LM&P gain insights from their data and are considered a vital resource for the department.

Successful candidates will have excellent communication skills, strong analytical, computational, and life sciences training or experience, and be comfortable working independently and as part of an interdisciplinary research team on diverse projects.

As part of an interdisciplinary team, successful candidates will have the responsibilities to:

• Serve as a bioinformatics analyst and developer for research and clinical projects for LM&P.
• Consult with LM&P researchers on experimental design and planning.
• Design and implement appropriate informatics workflows.
• Identify and integrate new, cutting-edge molecular technologies and analysis methods as they become useful for research and/or clinical purposes (e.g., single-cell expression profiling, long-read sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, etc.)
• Appropriately document and present methods and results in both internal and external reports, publications, and presentations.

The ideal candidates will have advanced knowledge of next generation sequencing technologies with demonstrated practical experience in developing and carrying out analytical strategies in the context of NGS applications (e.g. RNA-seq, DNA SNP and structural variant detection, de novo sequence assembly, etc.).

This is a Minnesota-based position. A portion of moving expenses may be covered per University guidelines.

The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) and The University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) endorses a “work with flexibility” approach that offers a welcoming and flexible work environment where everyone is inspired to do their best. Work location options include working fully remote, partially remote, or entirely in the office and are based on the work of the position. Some on-site work may be necessary for certain positions, even those designated as fully remote.

This position has been designated as OVPR Work Profile Two.
Work Profile Two is expected to work on-site more than 50% of the time. Your office will be located in Walter Library in the Twin Cities, East Bank Campus. MSI management retains the right to modify flexible work arrangement agreements on a temporary or permanent basis for any reason at any time.

Required Qualifications

• Doctorate in the life sciences, computer science or engineering. Candidates must have significant bioinformatics experience.
• 3+ years of research experience in the life sciences as primary or secondary research field.
• Hands-on experience in developing and carrying out data analytical strategies and pipelines for analyzing datasets from high-throughput platforms such as next generation sequencing.
• Experience/general proficiency with UNIX shell environment, a programming language (ideally R or python), plus currently used tools (e.g. BWA, HISAT2, GATK, freebayes, Cell Ranger, Seurat, etc.)
• Must be able to understand and translate life scientist researchers' scientific goals into analytical strategies and process requirements.
• Must be able to function as part of an interactive team while demonstrating self-initiative to achieve project's goals and the group's mission.
• Critical and independent thinking
• Excellent oral and written English communication and interpersonal skills
• Must be able to begin employment within six weeks of offer.

Preferred Qualifications

• Research background in genomics, genetics, molecular biology or computational biology.
• Research background in human or mammalian genetics is strongly preferred.
• Strong general computational and programming skills (R, Python, Perl, Java, C/C++).
• Advanced statistical and data modeling skills are highly desirable.
• Proteomics or cloud development (e.g. Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc.) skills are appreciated but not required.