Associate Principal Bioinformatics Scientist

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Working at Abbott 
At Abbott, you can do work that matters, grow, and learn, care for yourself and your family, be your true self, and live a full life. You’ll also have access to: 

• Career development with an international company where you can grow the career you dream of. 

• Employees can qualify for free medical coverage in our Health Investment Plan (HIP) PPO medical plan in the next calendar year. 

• An excellent retirement savings plan with a high employer contribution. 

• Tuition reimbursement, the Freedom 2 Save student debt program, and FreeU education benefit - an affordable and convenient path to getting a bachelor’s degree. 

• A company recognized as a great place to work in dozens of countries worldwide and named one of the most admired companies in the world by Fortune. 

• A company that is recognized as one of the best big companies to work for as well as the best place to work for diversity, working mothers, female executives, and scientists. 

The Opportunity 
This position works out of our San Diego location supporting R&D in our Cancer Diagnostics division.

We’re empowering smarter medical and economic decision-making to help transform the way people manage their health at all stages of life. Every day, more than 10 million tests are run on Abbott’s diagnostics instruments, providing lab results for millions of people.  

Our Point of Care diagnostic portfolio spans key health and therapeutic areas, including infectious disease, cardiometabolic, informatics, and toxicology.   

Our diagnostic solutions are used in hospitals, laboratories, and clinics around the globe. The crucial information derived from our tests, instruments, and informatics systems is often the first step in patient care decision-making for hundreds of health conditions from heart attacks to blood disorders to infectious diseases and cancers.  

Our rapid diagnostics solutions are helping address some of the world’s greatest healthcare challenges.   

Our molecular division delivers best-in-class innovative testing solutions for people around the world to provide answers to life’s critical health decisions.  We help people live full and healthy lives through our accessible, molecular-based solutions.   

Position Overview
The Associate Principal Bioinformatics Scientist is self-driven, working on multiple projects that are extremely complex in scope, often across multiple groups and sites. 

As a thought leader, the Principal Bioinformatics Scientist brings their knowledge and expertise to bear in planning, design, and execution to ensure successful and timely completion of large or complex projects. This role is responsible for providing the timeline, plan, and successful completion for assignments/projects. This position plays a critical role in the analysis and interpretation of data, presenting and providing data driven outcomes to senior management.

Working independently or in a team setting, the Principal Bioinformatics Scientist will be involved in Research and Development projects serving as a thought leader and subject matter expert by providing guidance in exploring, researching, and testing new technologies or guiding the technical aspects of the molecular diagnostics product development from concept to completion.

Essential Duties
Include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Work on significant and unique issues where analysis or situations or data requires an evaluation of intangible variables and may impact future concepts, products, or technologies.

• Responsible for developing, planning, and analysis of results from experiments within several product or technology areas to inform and enable project progression, identify problems and discrepancies, and determine the next steps and the path forward for successful outcomes.

• Independently plan and develop algorithms.

• Act independently to determine methods and procedures or technologies wherein intangible variables may impact future concepts, and products.

• Responsible for providing the timeline, plan, and successful completion for assignments/projects.

• Maintain knowledge of industry technology developments and provide technical assessment and guidance during technology evaluations.

• Provide deep scientific and technical input and participate in decisions affecting project planning and experimental design or product development.

• Prepare, provide, and present information and data for scientific abstracts/scientific and industry conferences/project meetings/publications.

• Prepare manuscripts of major findings and research outcomes for publication and reviews.

• Perform complex analyses and present results and data-driven outcomes to senior management as well as to a variety of audiences throughout the organization.

• Contribute to the intellectual property portfolio by implementing innovative and creative ideas to solve problems or improve on current methods and help during IP files.

• Generate, document, and communicate development plans for critical projects.

• Prepare detailed technical documents for development procedures, protocols, and reports.

• Evaluate impact of nonconforming data to product or process.

• Identify and address trends in study data.

• Prepare and approve written reports.

• Lead identification of areas for process improvements.

• Prepare reports and documentation providing highly technical analysis or summarization of results, outcomes and next steps and the future direction of the project to functional leader, to technical teams/groups, or project teams.

• Present results with and across R&D function and provide data-informed future direction of projects to the team, R&D and/or functional leaders.

• Work on problems which are extremely complex in scope in which analysis of data requires an evaluation of intangible variables. 

• Exercise independent judgment in developing methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for obtaining solutions.

• Receptive to change in technology, methods or organization processes and adapt as needed.

• Work on assignments individually and with project team members to meet department and project objectives.

• Ability to determine project timeframes which will result in successful outcomes on multiple projects.

• Provide expert knowledge of scientific principles and concepts, on projects that are extremely complex in scope.

• Act as subject matter expert in departmental, team, core team and/or cross-functional meetings.

• Exercises latitude in determining objectives and approaches to critical assignments.  

• Promote an open, collaborative environment built on trust to foster positive teamwork.

• Ability to develop formal networks with key decision makers, internally and externally.

• Apply deep scientific expertise, innovation, creativity, collaboration with others and independent thought.

• Plan, recommend, and lead activities that account for prioritization of organizational and department goals.

• Train, guide, and mentor junior bioinformatics scientists.

• Organize, present, and convey complex problems or issues.

• Communicate clearly and frequently with all levels of the organization; including team members, project team members (core and extended), functional managers, clinical lab, and other stakeholders.

• Create and deliver high quality presentations that effectively communicate and tie into a cohesive story the project status and/or experimental results.

• Apply qualitative and analytical skills with strong attention to detail.

• Ability to effectively work on several varied projects at one time, with frequent changing priorities.

• Excellent analytical, problem solving and decision-making skills.

• Demonstrate success in technical proficiency, scientific creativity, collaboration with others and independent thought. 

• Apply sound technical knowledge and ability gained through experience and/or learning.

• Uphold company mission and values through accountability, innovation, integrity, quality, and teamwork.

• Support and comply with the company’s Quality Management System policies and procedures.

• Maintain regular and reliable attendance.

• Ability to act with an inclusion mindset and model these behaviors for the organization.

• Ability to work on a mobile device, tablet, or in front of a computer screen and/or perform typing for approximately 90% of a typical working day.

• Ability and means to travel 5% between Exact Sciences locations.

• Ability to travel 5% of working time away from work location, may include overnight/weekend travel.

• Minimum Qualifications

• PhD in bioinformatics, computational biology, computer science, mathematics, or related field; or Master’s degree in bioinformatics, computational biology, computer science, mathematics, or related field plus 4 years of experience in lieu of a PhD; or Bachelor’s degree in bioinformatics, computational biology, computer science, mathematics, or related field plus 6 years of experience in lieu of PhD.

• 9+ years of industry or academia experience in bioinformatics.

• 8+ years of experience in molecular diagnostics, medical device/IVD/Laboratory Developed Tests (LDT) development, biotech, or life science.

• Demonstrated experience in developing statistical and quantitative methods.

• Demonstrated thought leader in the area of bioinformatics, genomics, and/or next-generation sequencing (NGS).

• Demonstrated leadership in the area of product/assay research, design, or development.

• Proficient in Microsoft Office to include Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

• Demonstrated ability to perform the essential duties of the position with or without accommodation.

Preferred Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in medical device/IVD, biotech, life science or pharmaceutical industry.

• Experience developing and applying advanced linear and non-linear statistical learning methods on complex datasets, including but not limited to supervised and unsupervised machine techniques.

• Familiarity with applying AI techniques such as deep learning, neural networks, or similar on high dimensional data.

• Previous experience in developing algorithms in Molecular Diagnostics.

• Previous experience in liquid biopsy NGS.

• Demonstrated familiarity with software development lifecycle.

• Demonstrated familiarity with Dev/Ops concept.

• Experience with Project management tools such as SmartSheet or MS Projects.

• Previous industry experience in product development or research.

• Familiar with the design control process of IVD assay development.

• Background containing a substantial amount of bioinformatics work including troubleshooting.

• Previous experience working in a molecular diagnostics/clinical laboratory setting.

The base pay for this position is

In specific locations, the pay range may vary from the range posted.

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