Systems Engineer

We are seeking a Systems Engineer positioned at the intersection of health services research and data science.  Will be responsible for the design, standardization, performance, and management of data within the Department of Oncology. The ideal candidate is skilled in rigorous problem-solving with large-scale, real-world data.

A Systems Engineer for our Solid Tumors and Hematologic Malignancies Programs will be primarily responsible for developing and managing a comprehensive molecular and clinical database. This pivotal role involves the meticulous gathering, structuring, and integration of molecular and clinical data related to solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. The candidate will also ensure that this database seamlessly interfaces with detailed clinical information systems. Key responsibilities include designing robust data transfer pipelines from molecular pathology servers, ensuring data accuracy and integrity, and implementing innovative data storage solutions. The ideal candidate should possess strong technical skills in database management and be adept at working with large, complex datasets. Collaborating closely with IT specialists and clinical researchers, the Systems Engineer will play a crucial role in advancing our understanding of solid tumors and hematologic malignancies through data-driven insights.

Specific Duties & Responsibilities

• With a high level of autonomy, the Systems Engineer designs and deploys large-scale data frames to support analytics and evaluation for a wide range of research, operational, and evaluation projects supporting Solid Tumors and Hematologic Malignancies. This involves data management and integrating enterprise applications, research and other data sources in a collaborative multidisciplinary team.
• Database Design and Development.
• Establish robust data transfer and data storage solutions.
• Design and implement standard operating procedures that allow clinicians, organizational leaders, and scientists to analyze up-to-date molecular and clinical data from patients with solid tumors and hematologic malignancies.
• Write and maintain code to extract individual and organizational data derived from a multi-hospital electronic health record.
• Investigate data sources to understand all data generation and updating aspects, including data structures and sources, normal data values, and reasons for anomalies. Maintain documentation of data extraction processes to ensure standardization and retention of the core meaning of data.
• Understand requirements for data, information, reporting, and analytic needs to ensure alignment, maximize efficiency, and minimize duplicative effort with a number of overlapping projects and teams.
• Develop, manage, and ensure ongoing implementation of precision oncology data standards. Partner in the development, management, establishment, and enforcement of technical standards across multiple Precision Medicine programs.
• Collaborate with mentors and learners to design and support the implementation of projects.
• Identify areas for data quality improvement by participating in root cause analysis. Make recommendations to prevent and remediate data quality issues through the appropriate choice of architectures and practices.
• Assist with troubleshooting and tuning of diverse projects as needed.

Regulatory & Best Practice Compliance

• Deeply understand, educate other team members about, and ensure compliance with relevant human subjects and privacy regulations and best practices, emanating from both the federal level and Johns Hopkins, including the Institutional Review Board and Data Trust.
• Codify team knowledge and practices into Standard Operating Procedures that can be shared to ensure reproducible science both across Johns Hopkins Precision Medicine programs and throughout the world.
• Negotiate effective coordination with other teams within and external to Johns Hopkins Implementation & Maintenance.
• Write transparent code to implement data flows and locked data sets to support specific and ongoing analyses.
• Share code and support others sharing code in developing a fundamentally open and reproducible approach within the Cancer Center and across Johns Hopkins Precision Medicine.
• Monitor changes and resolve highly complex problems requiring high technical expertise by responding as problems arise. Accomplish this by reviewing all processing and output of the newly implemented solution and by proactively ensuring the solution works successfully to satisfy the team’s requirements and provide a smooth transition to the new solution.
• Recommend and advocate for data policies, governance structures, and control frameworks for the ongoing management of data to ensure interpretation stability, converg