At Sage Bionetworks, we believe that we can learn more by engaging and collaborating with people from a diversity of experiences, backgrounds and identities.We develop and apply open practices to data-driven research for the advancement of human health. We are working to establish actionable biomedical observations through the reliable analysis and responsible sharing of representative data. By improving the way scientists collaborate and by increasing the reliability of research, we will improve human health.

Do you want to be an enthusiastic contributor to a team of problem solvers – computational biologists, software engineers, and data scientists? Do you have software development experience and a passion for mission-driven work? If so, you could be our next Research Software Engineer.

Data & Tooling Department

The Data & Tooling Department at Sage provides technical solutions that make it easier for biomedical researchers and data scientists to get their job done. We partner with research teams to build these pipelines for projects in cancer, neurodegenerative disease research, clinical informatics, and other bioinformatics and healthcare domains.

Your Role

You will build out and maintain components in our biomedical and open data ecosystem, contribute to team-science use cases, and develop implementations utilized by researchers across multiple biomedical areas: from oncology to COVID-19. Types of projects/packages you have a chance to contribute to:

• Developing open source software that interacts with Synapse’s (our core data platform) API and/or software that allows different applications to communicate with each other.
• Developing applications that facilitate the storage, management, and processing of data via cloud, workflow, and containerization technologies in support of large data collaborative initiatives and data management projects.

By interacting with multiple communities across the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the Global Alliance for Genomics & Health (GA4GH), you will also have endless opportunities to learn from, contribute to, and accelerate biomedical discovery.

Here’s what you’ll do:

• Contribute to the development of tools and applications that facilitate tracking, scalability, reproducibility, or processing of data and computational analyses in large scale scientific collaborations.
• Work with scientists, software developers, project managers, and the Sage platform engineering team to improve products like Synapse (synapse.org), in-house applications, or third-party integrations that are part of our data platform ecosystem
• Contribute to technical documentation to support users and developers.
• Sometimes participate in and monitor the development of external groups and communities to stay informed on best practices and standards.
• Participate in code reviews and provide feedback on code across the organization.
• Use packages (e.g pandas) to build tools that interact with biomedical data combined with Python frameworks (e.g pytest) to ensure tool reliability.

We’d love to hear from you if you:

• Have passion for open science, collaboration, and reproducible research and/or enthusiasm about applying modern technologies to accelerate scientific progress
• Have an MS in Computer Science, Bioinformatics, Software Engineering or related field and 2+ years of relevant job experience, or a BS and 4+ years of relevant job experience.
• Have an intermediate proficiency with collaborative development and version control systems (e.g. git).
• Have an intermediate proficiency with software development life cycles and scripting/package development in Python and optionally R.
• Possess effective verbal, written, and organizational skills with the ability to communicate with a variety of technical and non-technical collaborators.
• Have an intermediate proficiency with continuous integration (CI), continuous development (CD), and testing frameworks.

Also Preferred BUT NOT Required:

• Comfortable working in a cloud based IT environment or HPC/cluster environments.
• Experience working with biomedical (including genomic, imaging, or clinical) data.

 Essential Job Functions

The cognitive and physical activities described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform these functions.

• Sedentary work.Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
• Repetitive motion. Substantial movements (motions) of the wrists, hands, and/or fingers.
• Close visual acuity to perform an activity such as: preparing and analyzing data and figures; transcribing; viewing a computer terminal; extensive reading. 
• Exerting up to 10 pounds of force occasionally and/or negligible amount of force frequently or constantly to lift, carry, push, pull or otherwise move objects. 
• May require travel dependent on company needs.
• Can work under deadlines.

About Sage Bionetworks

Sage Bionetworks is a nonprofit biomedical research and technology development organization that was founded in Seattle in 2009. Our focus is to develop and apply open practices to data-driven research for the advancement of human health. Data-driven research has become an important component of biomedicine, but it’s not always easy to understand how to apply computational approaches appropriately or how to interpret their results. Sage believes open practices can help. Our interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers work together to provide researchers access to technology tools and scientific approaches to share data, benchmark methods, and explore collective insights, all backed by Sage’s gold-standard governance protocols and commitment to user-centered design. Sage is supported through a portfolio of competitive research grants, commercial partnerships, and philanthropic contributions.

At Sage, we have a distributed workforce and support remote and/or on-site hybrid work arrangements within the United States. All interviews will be conducted virtually unless otherwise communicated.
Sage Bionetworks is pleased to offer a comprehensive benefit package, competitive to both commercial and not-for-profit life science organizations. The plan includes: health, dental, vision, life, Accidental Death and Dismemberment and Long Term Disability benefits; paid time off; a retirement plan; flexible spending accounts; a shared incentives plan, voluntary Long Term Care insurance, and other voluntary products. Additional information can found here: Benefits – Sage Bionetworks

At Sage, we engage equitable workplace strategies to ensure fair compensation. Actual compensation is dependent upon current market data, experience, and pay parity within our organization. This is a Professional level position, with a compensation range of $90,632 – $129,302.