Bioinformatics Team Lead, Plant Health

GreenLight Biosciences is seeking an impactful, experienced and collaborative Bioinformatics Team Lead to contribute in our Data Science and Bioinformatics team. You will drive the partnership with and deliver on key objectives for our Plant Health teams spanning Entomology, Plant Pathology and Crop Traits. In this role, the Bioinformatics Team Lead will lead a small team of cross-functional PhD-level Bioinformatics scientists integrally involved in Plant Health Discovery Research by using algorithm design and workflow development to support biological hypotheses creation. The ideal candidate is a scientifically oriented, hands-on technical leader with demonstrated experience in leading small teams of bioinformatics/computational biology scientists in academia or the biotech industry. Strong scientific project and stakeholder management, as well as interpersonal and technical communication skills, are essential.

Responsibilities:

• Lead as a thought and technical leader to a team of Bioinformatics Scientists partnering with Plant Health teams spanning Entomology, Plant Pathology and Crop Traits.
• Lead the direction and execution of automated bioinformatics workflows and novel algorithms to derive actionable and novel biological insights/conclusions from a variety of biological data sets
• Scientifically partner with Plant Health stakeholders to identify and deliver on value-creation milestones. Shepherd communication with partners on project deliverables and timelines
• Contribute hands-on to the design and implementation of data processing models to large-scale multi-omics eukaryotic datasets (Genome, Transcriptome, Protein) by combining existing public and commercial tools, with innovative custom solutions
• Drive the translation of data into actionable biological insights, with intuitive visualizations and effective communication, to a wide variety of stakeholders
• Lead and motivate team members, providing mentorship/training, setting goals, supervising progress, providing regular feedback and year end performance evaluation. Foster a resilient, kind and collaborative Team culture.
• Take ownership of maintaining and updating in-house bioinformatics algorithms as stakeholder needs evolve
• Communicate results and findings with internal and external stakeholders, including but not limited to researchers, regulatory agencies etc.
• Continuously align with leadership on project priorities for self and team, and with peers on best practices for delivering data solutions
• Ensure software development standard methodologies are followed and maintain accurate documentation

Required qualifications:

1. D. in Bioinformatics, Genomics, Agriculture, Computational Biology, or a related biological computation field
2. >=1 year(s) of managing a team of Bioinformaticians/Bioinformatics Scientists
3. >=5 years of post-PhD work experience, including >=2 years in Agriculture-related industries
4. Domain expertise in >=1 of Insect, Fungi or Plant species (More than one kingdom is a Plus).
5. Strong understanding of Bioinformatics methods and tools, and demonstrated experience utilizing sequencing data with bioinformatics tools or pipelines to achieve scientific outcomes
6. Demonstrated experiences in programming with Python and R for biological datasets
7. Demonstrated experience utilizing next generation sequencing data with bioinformatics tools or pipelines to achieve scientific outcomes
8. Experience leveraging a wide variety of public and custom-developed bioinformatics tools and datasets to build/support hypothesis
9. Strong experiences managing self and team workload through structured operations with the objective of delivering on time across multiple projects
10. Strong experiences communicating with stakeholders and peers on project priorities, deliverables etc. in formal and informal settings
11. Stay up to date with the latest bioinformatics methods and tools, and be able to apply them to solve problems related to RNAi product development
12. Solid, demonstrable experience developing algorithms for solving biological problems. A biology-centric and data-oriented thought process.
13. Demonstrated ability to present complex results, both verbally and in writing, to bioinformatics and non-bioinformatics audiences of all levels is critical
14. Must be independently driven, results-oriented and a quick learner. Must maintain a HIGH level of ownership and see assignments through to completion based on agreed upon deadlines

Preferred qualifications:

• Exceptional candidates would have Industry experience, and strong domain knowledge in RNAi mechanisms, Molecular Biology, and Gene Expression regulation and Bioinformatics
• Demonstrated experiences in innovating in the scientific domain
• Experience with reproducible code frameworks such as JIRA, Trello, Confluence and GitHub, and workflow management systems
• Experience with high-performance computing environments including cloud infrastructures such as Azure, AWS or Google Cloud (Azure preferred)
• Experience with Project Management (Courses or certifications)
• Experience with RNAi-related product development is a plus