PatientsLikeMe is seeking an experienced, highly-motivated, creative problem solver to help us brainstorm, design, build, and maintain systems and infrastructure that enable and support bioinformatics research and clinical data processes. This position reports to the director of data engineering within the Bioinformatics group at PLM, working on a small team of data engineers and collaborating with stakeholders from research, computational biology, knowledge management, science operations, and patient programs.
The senior data engineer will be tasked with developing systems for handling multiple types of data, including: patient-generated health data; patient clinical data and associated business logic; biosample data / LIMS systems; bioinformatics knowledge-base; and data provided by various types of biosample analysis vendor (DNA, RNA-seq, proteomic, metabolomics, etc.). In addition to collection and storage, we are building systems for tracking patients and biologic samples; data anomaly detection and remediation/cleaning; reporting and visualization; dataset generation for research; processing of large sets of raw biologic data; and enabling cutting-edge analysis capabilities. Since we are a part of the research organization, much of our work involves creating fast prototypes to solve vaguely-defined yet timely problems. Due to the nature of our work and the data we manage, privacy, security, and regulatory compliance pertain to everything we do.

The ideal candidate will have significant, demonstrable experience relevant to the description above and after reading this far will be enthusiastic to apply. The candidate’s interests and abilities should align very closely with the bullets below:

Areas of Responsibility

• Collaborate with stakeholders to conceive, design, build, and maintain systems for data management as described above.
• Duties will be a combination of innovation/development + operational/routine, i.e., we create it and then maintain it for as long as necessary.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in a Technical or Analytical field of study.

Proficiency in at least 2 general-purpose object-oriented languages (Python highly preferred)


• Advanced facility with SQL and RDBMS systems (Postgres preferred)
• Strong familiarity with at least one visualization library
• Experience with a web app framework (Django preferred)
• Linux (some IT experience is desirable)
• Ability to brainstorm, communicate, and develop (as lead or individual contributor) ideas for technology solutions

Experience:

• 5+ years software engineering + an advanced degree in a technical area
• Proven track record designing and building systems for managing and processing data from disparate sources
• Passion for creating innovative solutions to not-very-well-defined problems
• Highly desirable: experience with clinical / health data, processes, and systems (e.g. EDC systems)