Bioinformatics Specialist

Under the direction of the Bioinformatics Manager, the Bioinformatics Specialist will be a senior member of the technical development group at Canadian Centre for Computational Genomics (C3G), a bioinformatics platform hosted at the McGill Genome Centre (MGC). The chosen candidate will lead development for large scale projects, as well as design, test, and perform advanced bioinformatics analyses that enable the interpretation of data generated by various biological assays. Working closely with other members of the McGill Genome Centre, the chosen candidate will be exposed to a wide variety of novel sequencing technologies, bioinformatics approaches, and state of the art computing resources in a facility dedicated to high-throughput sequencing and large-scale genomic studies.

• Act as the technical lead on selected projects, supervising and mentoring junior members of the unit. Monitor the progress of data analysis, and ensure quality of the results and code delivered to collaborators. Manage the analysis for several projects at the same time.
• Support the data production activities of the sequencing platform in collaboration with their staff and managers, mainly by automating standard analyses as well as diagnosing and troubleshooting problematic runs.
• Actively contribute to the technical development group efforts to create standard operating procedures and automated analysis workflows based on in-house and third-party tools.
• Develop, test, and maintain bioinformatics solutions for the analysis of various data types.
• Occasionally perform customized bioinformatics analysis work for collaborators, prepare related visualizations and reports in an accurate and timely manner.
• When required, provide detailed reports with analysis results and methods descriptions. 
• Provide regular internal reports, both written and oral, regarding the progress of projects, as well as contribute to problem-solving discussions within the team.
• Keep online documentation up-to-date, explaining the usage and relevance of the tools used.
• Stay informed of the most relevant bioinformatics practices.
• Teach and help organize training events provided by the platform.
• Participate in the authoring of scientific publications, and occasionally present results in seminars and conferences.

Minimum Requirements

• Undergraduate degree (Bioinformatics, Statistics, Computer Science or related field)
• Three (3) years’ related experience

Other Qualifying Skills and/or Abilities 

• MSc or PhD in Bioinformatics, Statistics, Computer Science is preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to write code in Python, R and a Unix shell scripting language is required (providing an online repository with a coding portfolio is encouraged).
• Proven experience with data analysis in a scientific research context.
• Experience using high-performance computing systems is required, cloud computing experience is an asset.
• Familiarity with using container technologies and workflow management systems are an asset. 
• Knowledge of information systems and computational pipelines deployed in a sequencing facility is an asset.
• Experience lecturing in training workshops is desirable.
• Good communication and writing skills in English is also required (French is an asset).