The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is one of 27 Institutes and Centers at the National Institutes of Health. NLM is a global leader in biomedical informatics and computational health data science and the world’s largest biomedical library. NLM’s legislative mandate is to support the essential work of acquiring, organizing, preserving, and disseminating biomedical information. NLM provides public access to this information 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

NLM Division: National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)

NLM Program/Office: Information Engineering Branch (IEB)

Application Period: Applications will be accepted August 29, 2024 through September 29, 2024.

Overview: 

The IEB is responsible for designing and building NCBI’s production software and databases. They: (1) perform applied research in the area of data representation and analysis for molecular biology data, including development of computer based systems for the storage, management, and retrieval of knowledge concerning molecular biology, genetics, and biochemistry; (2) design schema and specifications for representation of sequence genetic and structural information in databases which will serve as national resources; (3) design and develop distributed software systems from the prototype to operational phases which provide researchers with both local and remote computational services; (4) coordinate access to sequence, genetic, structural, and bibliographic databases; (5) establish collaborative informatics research projects with NIH Intramural laboratories as well as extramural academic groups; (6) consult and advise other government agencies and research laboratories on advanced methods of software and database design; and (7) develop and promote standards for databases, data exchange, and biological nomenclature.

This position will contribute to development and maintenance of solutions to support continued development of NCBI’s Sequence Read Archive (SRA) – the world premier archive of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) data and is a part of international collaboration that includes archives in Europe and Japan.  SRA makes biological sequence data derived from NGS available to the research community to enhance reproducibility and allow for new discoveries by analyzing and comparing data sets. SRA is a BigData archive measured in tens of petabytes of stored data. The future development of SRA will make this data more useful for wide variety fields: Medical Health (e.g., genetic diseases, cancer, etc.), Public Health (e.g., food safety monitoring, antimicrobial resistance, viral outbreaks, etc.), microbial diversity, and many more.

Position Description/Responsibilities:

The incumbent will be responsible for:

• The development, implementation, testing, and continued maintenance of the SRA data delivery and distribution pipelines;
• Working with a diverse group of scientists, bioinformaticians and other developers across the SRA Program and NCBI to implement efficient bioinformatics algorithms and to further advance the usefulness of SRA data;
• Design and implementation of sustainable and scalable services to be used by collaborators and scientists in the field.
• Keeping abreast with new high throughput, distributed processing, and cloud technologies;
• Keeping up with the internal systems designs and documentation, and sharing knowledge with the team; and
• Ensuring compliance with NCBI, NLM, NIH and government standards and directives for software development and delivery, including privacy and security controls.

Position Requirements:

We are looking for an individual with:

• 3+ years of experience developing highly available, high-traffic, distributed software applications;
• Experience developing data and document submission interfaces and processing pipelines for bioinformatics data;
• Knowledge of Next Generation Sequencing technologies, bioinformatics data formats and tools;
• Ability to troubleshoot bugs and outages in production applications;
• Experience introducing and managing Agile software development practices;
• Proficiency in C++ and Python programming languages;
• Fluency in scripting languages such as bash and csh;
• Knowledge of AWS and GCP cloud technologies and modern web client frameworks; and
• Experience implementing DevOps practices and Git workflow.

Education Requirements:

The ideal candidate may or may not be a United States citizen and must have a doctoral degree.

Foreign Education:

Selectees who have completed part or all their education outside of the United States must have their foreign education evaluated by an accredited organization to ensure that the foreign education is equivalent to education received in accredited educational institutions in the United States. We will only accept the completed foreign education evaluation. For more information on foreign education verification, visit the National Association of Credential Evaluation Services (NACES) website. Verification must be received prior to the effective date of the appointment.

Salary and Benefits:

Salary is commensurate with research experience and accomplishments. A full package of benefits, including retirement, health, life, and long-term care insurance, Thrift Savings Plan participation, etc., is available.

The successful candidate will serve in a non-competitive and time-limited, renewable appointment in the excepted service. 

How to Apply

Interested individuals should send a copy of their CV and Bibliography with the names of three references along with a cover letter detailing research interests, a brief summary of communication and organizational skills, and evidence of engagement in multi-disciplinary collaborative research to ncbijobs@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Please include the announcement number, NLM9802-2024, in the cover letter. Do not include your birth date, social security number (SSN), or personal photograph on application materials.

Commitment to Diversity and Equal Employment Opportunity

NIH/NLM encourages the application and nomination of qualified women, minorities, and individuals with disabilities. The U.S. government does not discriminate in employment based on race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation, pregnancy, and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factors. NIH/NLM will provide reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities as appropriate. If you require reasonable accommodation during any part of the application and hiring process, please notify us.

Reasonable Accommodation

You can request a reasonable accommodation at any time during the application or hiring process or while on the job. Requests are considered on a case-by-case basis.

Contact Information: Melissa M. Kopyto, email: melissa.kopyto@nih.gov

HHS, NIH, and NLM are equal opportunity employers.

Last Reviewed: August 29, 2024