Job Summary:

Bold discovery is a hallmark of Northwestern University’s research enterprise. Northwestern IT is committed to providing excellent computational and data services for Northwestern researchers. We are looking for a Lead Computational Biology Specialist to join the Research Computing Services team in supporting world-class genomics research across the university.

As a Lead Computational Biology Specialist, you will lead and run the services and initiatives to support genomics and -omics research by partnering with teammates, Northwestern researchers, stakeholders, and peers in other institutions. You will onboard and support researchers to run genomics pipelines on the Northwestern Genomics Compute Cluster and assist in managing their data. You will regularly communicate with stakeholders and collaborate with them in expanding services and resources for genomics researchers. As an integral member of Research Computing Services, you will help faculty and students build computing- and data-related skills by leading workshops and through consultation.

*Note: Not all aspects of the job are covered by this job description.

Specific Responsibilities:

Foster relationships with researchers and peers externally to understand new research trends, evaluate existing support models, capture requirements, and develop solutions towards new services and service improvements for genomics community. Recommend achievable strategic goals, identify resources, and needs as we strive to further our strategic goals and initiatives.
Lead and develop training programs to educate graduate students, research staff, and faculty for utilizing and implementing bioinformatics pipelines, using local, national and cloud computing and storage resources. Provide technical workshops on computational tools, methods, available services and related topics for students, faculty, and staff.
Consult with researchers to understand their goals, provide guidance to improve workflows, build bioinformatics pipelines, and help researchers navigate the best use of local and external resources. Provide support to researchers in their computational and data-related research needs.
Support and grow existing communities of practice to promote the sharing of ideas and methods through working groups and collaborative tools.
Develop and manage documentation on available resources, tools, and standard methodologies.
Mentor individuals on the computational support team (staff and students) to ensure they have the skills to deliver high-quality support. Manage and/or mentor student support workers.
Communicate service adoption, usage, and growing needs to stakeholders, research community and team effectively and on a scheduled basis.
Lead projects related to the development of new services, process improvements, and service improvements, including ensuring projects stay within scope and are completed on time.
Minimum Competencies: (Skills, knowledge, and abilities.)

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience allowing candidate to develop skills in high-performance computing, data analysis, data management, or related field.
Demonstrated verbal and written communication skills, including ability to communicate technical details to non-technical audiences.
Experience developing effective and collaborative partnerships within and across organizations.
Ability to act on own initiative to further organizational and University goals.
Experience in teaching workshops or classes for technical and computational skills.
Experience developing, implementing, and testing bioinformatics pipelines.
Experience mentoring colleagues or students.
Demonstrate 2 or more years’ experience with large-scale computational systems, Linux-based large-scale multi-processor systems, and/or configuring software programs and applications in Linux-based computing environments.
Familiar with cloud computing and storage technologies, such as AWS, Google, or Azure offerings.
Proven project leadership skills, including ability to manage and prioritize projects, plan and implement project specifications, report project status, identify delays, and raise concerns.