About AstraZeneca in Gaithersburg, MD

Our Gaithersburg, Maryland facility creates life-changing medicines for people around the world. This campus employs more than 3,500 experts in our field and is only a short drive from Washington, DC. This modern and vibrant scientific campus is the home of R&D and Oncology in the US. Here, we play host to some of the most cutting-edge technology and lab spaces, all designed to inspire collaboration and cross-functional science. We believe employees benefit from being challenged and inspired at work. We are dedicated to creating a culture of inclusion and collaboration.

The Gaithersburg site offers a variety of amenities to help boost productivity and help keep our employees happy and healthy. This includes a fitness center, employee healthcare clinic, electric vehicle charging stations, dry cleaning, full-service cafeteria and copy center. This is where you’ll find newly-designed, activity-based work spaces to suit a variety of working styles while increasing collaboration between teams.

Summary of the Group

At AstraZeneca we harness data and technology to maximise time for the discovery and delivery of potential new medicines. Right now, we are embedding data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) across our R&D to enable our scientists to push the boundaries of science to deliver life-changing medicines.

The Data Infrastructure and Tools function in Data Science and AI leads data infrastructure and tools build & maintenance for R&D, partnering closely with Science IT. This includes establishing and running large scale data management and analytics environments driven by programmes such as Science Data Foundation. The group provides innovative solutions to informatics and data management challenges in R&D, including establishing support for new data types, and new ways of managing and integrating data, enhancing our effective use and re-use of our data to support R&D goals.

Main Duties and Responsibilities:

• Analysis of multi-omics data for drug discovery and biomarker identification through the design and development of analytical pipelines and data integration methodologies to facilitate the mining of large complex datasets and advance our understanding of disease.
• Deliver data processes, analytics, tools and methods to manage proteomics and metabolomics information and knowledge in collaboration with the expanding proteomics and metabolomics group.
• Develop the data infrastructure such as data pipelines, novel algorithms and management solutions to expedite the analysis of wide variety of proteomics, metabolomics and other omics studies, in conjunction with the scientists and data engineers.
• Conduct independent data analysis of proteomics and metabolomics data at different stages of drug discovery and target validation. The analysis may include data ingestion, QC, pipelining, integration, functional interpretation and visualization
• Provides solutions to a variety of informatics, data science and data management problems of moderate scope and complexity, including process definition and automation
• Designs and supports the conceptualisation of innovative information solutions to enable clinical trials to optimally utilise relevant data and support business decisions.
• Works collaboratively with colleagues within DS&AI, wider R&D and SEUIT to deliver scientific information platforms, database systems, processes, tools and techniques to solve scientific problems

Educational requirements:

Bioinformatics Scientist: Minimum MSc in a Life Science, Computer Science or similar discipline with 5+ years of relevant experience; or PhD with 1+ years of relevant experience preferred

Sr Bioinformatics Scientist: Minimum of a PhD in a Life Science, Computer Science or similar discipline with 5+ years of relevant experience required

Required skills:

• Strong data modelling skills with first-hand experience in integrated analysis of large, complex multi-omics datasets for biological insights
• Expertise in developing, testing and deploying automated workflows using workflow management engine such as snakemake, nextflow as well as Galaxy
• Broad knowledge of bioinformatics tools, statistical models, machine learning application and functional analysis tools (IPA, MetaCore, GSEA, etc)
• Practical experience with technical computer skills: scripting (e.g., R, Python, Unix, SQL); application languages (e.g., Java, C#)
• Ability to independently implement and support informatics solutions that meet users’ needs. Excellent communication skills with the ability to work with others to achieve objectives

Desired Qualifications:

• Proficiency in proteomics / metabolomics, MS bioinformatics software such as MaxQuant, Spectronaut or MS-DIAL
• Working knowledge of research and/or clinically relevant public and commercial data assets (CPTAC, ProteomeXchange, TCGA, GEO, etc.)
• Experience working with Linux environment, high performance computing clusters, and cloud computing (AWS), data management platforms (RDBMS, GraphDB, NoSQL) and web-based data visualization framework (Shiny, Dash, Flask, JavaScript)
• Hands-on experience of deliver reproducible analytic product (Rmarkdown or Jupyter) as well as project management in agile environment
• Proven track record of publishing relevant bioinformatics or systems biology results in peer-reviewed journals

Why AstraZeneca?

At AstraZeneca when we see an opportunity for change, we seize it and make it happen, because any opportunity no matter how small, can be the start of something big. Delivering life-changing medicines is about being entrepreneurial - finding those moments and recognizing their potential. Join us on our journey of building a new kind of organization to reset expectations of what a bio-pharmaceutical company can be. This means we’re opening new ways to work, pioneering cutting edge methods and bringing unexpected teams together. Interested? Come and join our journey.

So, what’s next?

Are you ready to bring new ideas and fresh thinking to the table? Brilliant! We have one seat available and we hope it’s yours.

Where can I find out more?

Our Social Media, Follow AstraZeneca on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/1603/

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