Wednesday 13 June 2012

Bioinformatician "Data Finish & Quality Control" - SEQanswers

http://seqanswers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=75646#post75646

another of my series on the requirements of a BI guy ... my comments in red 


We are seeking a bioinformatician, computational biologist or software developer (I think they are really saying they want to look for a guy who is all of the above or is at least one but we will train you to do the other roles :) with knowledge of biology (oops yes you need to be a biologist as well :) )to work within the Production Bioinformatics Team. The 2 main axes of activity will be the development of integrated tools for tracking information at all stages of the sequencing process and the automated management, analysis and quality control of large amounts of sequence data. The successful candidate will report to the Production Bioinformatics Team Leader. 

Requirements
- Master's degree in Bioinformatics or related discipline with at least 1 year experience, or Bachelor's degree with 3+ years of practical experience ( I really do feel that Master's doesn't help make a person a better bioinformatician but I am assuming that you want a person with 3 years of experience, 2 years of which you are doing a Msc out of it but you do not wish to hire a PhD )
- Very able in Unix, Linux and Windows operating systems and networks (are you discounting my Mac skills? )
- In depth experience with Unix shell scripts and Python 
- Excellent teamwork, organizational and communicative skills 
- Good spoken and written English 

Desirable
- Experience in genomic data analysis 
- Proficiency in SQL. (I suppose this is for the LIMS)
- Knowledge of Perl, R and/or C/C++ (ah C++ is optional! am glad my C++ skills slowly atrophied to non existence)
- Experience with batch processing on a cluster 
- Experience with next generation sequencing data 
- Experience in a high-tech organization of several interacting, specialized teams 

Responsibilities
- Ongoing development of the quality control pipeline on a computer cluster so as to assure automated continuous operation and integration with LIMS (Lab Information Management System) 
- Maintenance of an automated system for determining sequence quality based on signal quality, alignment to reference genomes and other measurements 
- Management, analysis and quality control of large amounts of sequence data 
- Efficient testing and integration into the production pipeline of new software as it becomes available 
- Development of new software and IT solutions for the fast-changing field of DNA sequencing 
- Communication and troubleshooting with sequencing and bioinformatics groups 


No offense meant for my tongue in cheek comments ! But I do find an increasing demand for biologists that know programming / scripting or computational people that know biology .. is it really a hard mix to find? or is it a communication problem? I admit i straddle both roles and not excelling in either .. I do feel that if there was an excellent communicator that can bridge the gap actually more would be accomplished than trying to find a superman that handles both roles and doesn't have a Phd to further a career in research and doesnt' mind 'research' pay .. 

k my 2 cents

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