Advanced Bioinformatics Data Scientist

With over 35 nationalities and a range of backgrounds represented in our Benevolent team, we aim to build an inclusive environment where our people can bring their authentic selves to work, be respected for who they are and the exceptional work they do. We welcome and actively encourage applications from all sections of society and are committed to offering equal employment opportunities regardless of sex, race, religion or belief, ethnic or national origin, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, parental status, disability, age, citizenship, or any other basis. We see our diversity as an asset as we tackle challenging problems that bridge the gap between drug discovery and technology.

The Role

The Informatics and Data department is focused on applying bioinformatics techniques to drug discovery and precision medicine. We are keen to hear from experienced Bioinformaticians and Data Scientists, with a passion and proven track record of analysing biomedical datasets, to join the growing Biomedical Informatics department. You will find yourself working as part of a cross-functional team supporting the application of BenevolentAI’s data integration, target identification and precision medicine activities to our drug discovery programs.

The Portfolio Delivery team helps ensure our internal analysis tools and algorithms, as well as our data, are used to their fullest extent in our drug discovery programs. It helps structure our drug discovery workflows and devises new approaches to help answer biological questions raised by our various disease programs, for example, to help validate potential drug targets or support the identification of biomarkers. As an Advanced Bioinformatics Scientist in the team, you will contribute to this challenge with your technical and biological knowledge, providing technical leadership to our disease programs, as well as support to our drug discovery teams in the identification and progression of targets.

Primary Responsibilities

• Applying the Benevolent Platform to generate biological insights that lead to testable hypotheses relevant to Drug Discovery and Clinical Development programmes undertaken by BenevolentAI.
• Developing programmatic tools and workflows that automate the analysis of biomedical datasets.
• Working as a member of a cross-functional team, that brings together the best in class Informatics, Drug Discovery and Translational Medicine capabilities to tackle the scientific challenges BenevolentAI is looking to find solutions for.

We are looking for someone with

• MSc in bioinformatics, computational biology or related field of research
• Experience (1+ years, preferably industry-based) of analysing biomedical datasets which reveal novel biological insights and support Drug Discovery or Clinical Development activities
• Advanced programmer in at least one language. We have a strong preference for Python, but are also interested in R. Candidates should also be familiar with the language packages that support Bioinformatics and Data Science activities.
• Proven track record of processing and deriving novel insights from ‘omics datasets and related resources, such as Gene Expression Atlas, GEO, Array Express, TCGA and LINCs (familiarity with Omicsoft will be considered beneficial)
• At least one of the following:
  • Experience in designing experiments to generate data and gain insights into the molecular behaviour of cellular assay systems or patient-derived tissues.
  • Experience with using biomolecular network-based approaches to aid drug discovery or clinical biomarker development e.g. causal reasoning, pathway mapping and functional module detection.
  • Experience in processing and analysing transcriptomics and/or NGS datasets (such as scRNAseq or epigenetic data) using Bioconductor packages (e.g. DSeq2, edgeR, Limma) and other related toolkits (e.g STAR, Salmon, Kallisto, WGCNA).
• Excellent communicator, both verbal and written, with the ability to influence at all levels and across all departments.

Nice to haves

• Familiarity with some of the technologies we like, which includes: Neo4j, GraphQL, BigQuery, ElasticSearch, MySQL, MongoDB, Spark, Kubernetes, Jupyter.

About us

BenevolentAI unites AI with human expertise to discover new and more effective medicines. Our unique computational R&D platform spans every step of the drug discovery process, powering an in-house pipeline of over 25 drug programmes. We advance our mission to reinvent drug discovery by harnessing the power of a diverse team, rich with different backgrounds, experiences, opinions and personalities. In our offices in London and New York and research facility in Cambridge (UK), we work in highly collaborative, multidisciplinary teams, harnessing skills across biology, chemistry, engineering, AI, machine learning, informatics, precision medicine and drug discovery.

We share a passion for being part of a mission that matters, and we are always looking for curious and collaborative people who share our values and want to be part of our journey. If that sounds like a fit for you, hit the apply button and join us.

Want to do a little more research before you apply?

Head over to our Glassdoor page to learn about our benefits, culture and to find out what our team think about life at Benevolent. You can also find out more about us on LinkedIn and Twitter.