Senior Principal Computational Biologist

ROLE SUMMARY

Pfizer’s purpose is to deliver breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. Research and Development is at the heart of fulfilling Pfizer’s purpose as we work to translate advanced science and technologies into the therapies and vaccines that matter most. Whether you are in the discovery sciences, ensuring drug safety and efficacy or supporting clinical trials, you will apply cutting edge design and process development capabilities to accelerate and bring the best in class medicines to patients around the world.

Pfizer's cross-functional 'omics ecosystem team is actively seeking a highly motivated, creative, and enthusiastic computational biology researcher with a strong background in data handling, integration and analysis, exceptional full-stack software engineering skills, and a sound understanding of drug discovery and biology. You will have a relevant background in the field of bioinformatics research and will play a key role in our dynamic and pioneering cross-functional team dedicated to advancing the development of a cutting-edge ‘omics ecosystem platform for Pfizer R&D. In this role, you will leverage their expertise to design innovative approaches that extract valuable insights from Pfizer's proprietary data and external datasets, enabling the generation of testable hypotheses across the entire drug discovery value chain.
 

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES

In this role, you will work on: 

• Development and implementation of an omics data platform to enable efficient and scalable analysis of omics data

• Development of innovative machine learning methods for omics data together with the machine learning team

• Processing, analysis and integration of internal omics datasets

• Curation and integration of relevant datasets from the public domain

• Development of analysis pipelines

• Development of a data dissemination concept for omics data

• Implementation of new methods for omics data analysis and visualization techniques

• Drive collaborations with external companies

• Develop Pfizer omics data strategy together with other functions from the research units

• Onboarding of computational biology community members to data platform and organization of workshops, hackathons, trainings and scientific talks

• Strengthen external visibility and scientific excellence through publishing / presenting work in reputed journals and conference/workshop venues and engaging with the scientific community

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

• Formal training in Computational Biology, Computer Science, Biology, Physics, Statistics, or a related technical discipline

• PhD >1 year of relevant research experience in developing data products and data integration solutions as well as a sincere interest for computational life sciences

• In-depth knowledge in either single-cell/NGS, functional genomics, genetics or proteomics data and analysis

• Highly creative person with outstanding problem-solving skills to tackle complex analysis tasks in a timely fashion

• Strong full-stack developer with focus on python, in-depth database expertise with a focus on postgres, ETL frameworks. Exceptional programming skills in Python are a prerequisite. Familiarity with pertinent libraries within the Python scientific stack would be highly advantageous

• Nextflow pipeline development

• Hands-on experience in handling, processing, integrating, and analyzing large heterogenous data sets data in a drug discovery research environment

• Strong publication record and demonstrated contributions to the field

• Passion and curiosity for data and proven ability to take ideas from prototype to production.

• Strong interpersonal skills, distinct collaborative attitude, excellent written and verbal communication

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Proficiency in front-end technologies such as typescript, reactjs and browser-based visualization techniques is a plus

• Proficiency in utilizing AI/ML libraries including PyTorch and Lightning is a plus

• Experience with LLMs/RAG systems is a plus

• Proven expertise in software engineering, package development, cloud architectures, CI/CD and software engineering tooling

Relocation support