Open source, open science, citizen science – Join us!

If you follow our lab at all you’ve probably noticed some themes emerging in how we approach bioinformatics and biomedical research. To enumerate a few of those themes, we believe in:

• Open source: We have benefited from the long tradition of open source software in bioinformatics, and we in turn release code through our lab’s open source repositories. We have a particular emphasis on building bioinformatics infrastructure through high-performance web services.
• Open science: We do as much of our science in the open as possible, often highlighted here on our blog or on Twitter. We have a particular belief that we as a scientific community should collaborate on creating a free knowledgebase of biomedical knowledge, and then compete on the downstream visualizations and analyses.
• Citizen science: We believe that people have powerful and unique skills (vision, language) that cannot be rivaled by computers, and we build online platforms to harness those talents and empower non-scientists to tangibly and directly contribute to biomedical research.

It may seem idealistic, but we feel that this open and participatory model of doing science is more productive for our lab, more productive for the community, and more fun for everyone.

We’ve made great progress on these fronts over the years, and it’s a credit to the amazing team we’ve assembled. Each person brings unique talents and expertise, and the whole is clearly greater than the sum of the parts.

 

We are ready to expand our team.

 

Our recruiting and staffing philosophy operates on these basic principles:

• We only hire successful people, but we define success very broadly
• We bring together people who believe strongly in the mission described above
• We create an environment where people can (and are expected to) continually learn new skills
• We believe a diverse team is more productive and more fun

With a recent influx of money from the NIH, we have two web / software developer positions open at the moment. These positions are for people who have good software fundamentals, ideally who have worked in multi-developer and open-source environments. We are looking for developers who are excited by the challenge and opportunity to make a real difference in biomedical research. In addition, we are always looking for postdoctoral researchers who are interested in integrative biology and/or crowdsourcing research.

If you think either position is right for you, please get in touch by emailing me your CV and a cover letter. If our lab’s work strikes a chord with you but you’re unsure whether it’s a good fit, let’s chat!

 

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A more “standard” job ad is below with a few more details of the web / software developer positions:

The Su Lab (http://sulab.org) is a bioinformatics research group that is equally interested in building computational infrastructure and in pursuing biomedical discoveries. We operate at the interface between biology, computer science, statistics, and software engineering. Our projects span a wide spectrum of disease areas (including osteoarthritis, cancer, cystic fibrosis), organisms (human, mouse, microbiomes) and technology platforms (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics). We have a particular focus on building tools that leverage crowdsourcing, several of which are widely used by other bioinformaticians, biomedical scientists, and the general public.

The position being advertised will be involved in one or more NIH-funded projects focusing on building tools and infrastructure for management of biological data. Current representative projects include BioGPS.org, mygene.info, genegames.org, and mark2cure.org.

We have an outstanding team right now, and we are committed to maintaining this standard of awesomeness. We strongly believe in diversity, and women and minorities are particularly encouraged to apply.

The position requires a minimum of four years experience in software application development and programming. Must have proven expertise in building robust software in a multi-developer environment. Prior experience with open-source software is strongly preferred. Including links to public code repositories is strongly recommended.

Our current technology stack includes: Python/Django, Java/Tomcat, MongoDB, ElasticSearch, jQuery, Bootstrap, R/Bioconductor, Weka, Tornado, Postgres, uWSGI, Nginx, AWS EC2, AWS AMT, Crowdflower, Mercurial/Git. Prior experience with one or more of these technologies is preferred. Descriptions of how and why you’ve used competing technologies is also welcome.

Prior experience with biology and/or bioinformatics is preferred, but not required.

We strongly prefer employees who are in (or can relocate to) the San Diego area, but we are willing to investigate alternate arrangements (e.g., telecommuting, contractors, etc.).

Salary and benefits are very competitive, but you almost certainly could make more money in high-tech.