Computercraft seeks a highly skilled and self-motivated bioinformatics curator to join the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) group at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), part of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The successful candidate will receive, process, and solicit genetic sequencing datasets from scientific projects and investigators. Other job responsibilities include creating complete and accurate SRA records, analyzing sequence data and metadata to address questions about the content, and helping administer and maintain the database. 

The SRA, the largest publicly available repository of high-throughput sequencing data, stores raw sequencing data and alignment information to enhance reproducibility and facilitate new discoveries through data analysis. It is located under the Primary Data Archives at NCBI, which includes GenBank. To learn more about the SRA database, go to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/. 

The successful candidate will work together with experts from NCBI to create and enhance a suite of databases and cutting-edge tools available to researchers worldwide. The position will initially focus on viral and microbial metadata curation associated with coronavirus submissions, offering an opportunity to support the national COVID-19 pandemic response. 

This is a full-time position working on site at the NIH Campus in Bethesda, Maryland, but the new hire will initially telework. Currently, all Computercraft employees at NIH are teleworking full time to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Employees will return to onsite work as soon as it is deemed safe to do so. 

Required Background

• M.S. or Ph.D. in molecular biology or a related field
• Scripting in Bash, Perl, Python, or other shell scripting languages in the UNIX environment
• Experience with LINUX/UNIX
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Experience with sequence alignment programs (BLAST or related) or other DNA sequence analysis software
• The ability to work as part of a team
• A strong desire to support public scientific databases
• A detail-oriented outlook coupled with a love for puzzle and problem solving

Desired Skills

• Background in virology
• Database design, SQL, PL/SQL
• Ability to use Microsoft Excel and related applications
• XML, XSLT, and allied technologies
• Experience with array data, especially expression or genotyping data
• Experience with doing QA filtering of genotype data (HWE, non-Mendelian segregation)
• Experience with the NCBI GEO, SRA, dbSNP, Trace Archive, GenBank, or dbGaP databases

Computercraft offers a competitive salary, an excellent benefits package, and the opportunity for a positive work-life balance with a standard 40-hour work week and the chance to work alongside a team of highly accomplished professionals.

Computercraft is an equal opportunity employer.