Computational Scientist
Help shape the future of microbiome research! We're looking for a Microbiome Scientist with expertise in metagenomics and microbial community analysis to tackle complex scientific challenges, work with diverse microbiome datasets, and collaborate with a world-class team leveraging AI to accelerate biological discovery. Remote | Full-Time Position Overview As a key scientific contributor, you will work with complex microbiome and metagenomic datasets spanning human health, environmental systems, agriculture, and biotechnology applications. You will apply your expertise in microbial community analysis, functional interpretation, and experimental design to support the development of advanced computational solutions for life sciences research. Success in this role requires strong scientific judgment, deep understanding of microbial ecosystems, and the ability to distinguish meaningful biological signals from technical noise within large-scale sequencing datasets.
Responsibilities
Analyze large-scale shotgun metagenomic sequencing datasets to characterize microbial community composition, functional capacity, and ecological dynamics. Investigate relationships between microbial taxa, metabolic pathways, and biological phenotypes across diverse sample types including human, environmental, agricultural, and industrial microbiomes. Perform comparative analyses across cohorts, interventions, timepoints, and environmental conditions to identify biologically meaningful shifts in microbial community structure and function. Evaluate microbial signatures associated with disease states, therapeutic interventions, ecological succession, environmental perturbations, and host-microbe interactions. Interpret microbial functional profiles, pathway enrichments, antimicrobial resistance markers, virulence factors, and other biologically relevant features derived from sequencing data. Identify and assess sources of contamination, batch effects, sequencing artifacts, experimental biases, and confounding variables that may impact biological conclusions. Review and synthesize scientific literature and public datasets to validate findings and establish evidence-based biological interpretations. Assess the strength of evidence supporting microbiome-related hypotheses and critically evaluate analytical conclusions generated from complex sequencing datasets. Contribute subject matter expertise to AI-enabled research programs by translating microbiome workflows, analytical decision-making, and biological interpretation into structured scientific processes. Collaborate closely with computational biologists, machine learning scientists, and software engineers on projects involving biological data interpretation and scientific knowledge extraction. Support development and optimization of workflows for taxonomic profiling, functional annotation, metagenome assembly, strain tracking, and multi-omics integration. Generate clear, scientifically rigorous reports and communicate findings to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Qualifications
Master's or PhD in Microbiology, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Microbial Ecology, Genetics, or a related scientific discipline. 3+ years of experience working with microbiome, microbial genomics, or metagenomics datasets in academic, biotech, pharmaceutical, or industry settings. Strong understanding of microbial ecology, microbial physiology, host-microbe interactions, and microbiome study design. Experience analyzing next-generation sequencing datasets, including 16S and/or shotgun metagenomics approaches. Proficiency in Python, R, or similar scientific computing environments. Familiarity with microbial taxonomic profiling, functional annotation, pathway analysis, diversity metrics, and community-level interpretation.