Bioinformatics Team Manager

About DNAstack 

At DNAstack, our mission is to power precision medicine by building software that breaks down barriers to responsible biomedical data sharing, discovery, and analysis. We build cutting-edge software and industry standards to help researchers and clinicians analyze sequencing data and make faster, more accurate diagnoses. Our platform supports national and international networks tackling rare disease, cancer, infectious disease, and more.

We’re a nimble, cross-functional team of scientists, engineers, designers, and product thinkers working at the intersection of genomics, software, and cloud technologies. Our mission is ambitious, and so is our team.

The Role

We’re looking for a Bioinformatics Team Manager to lead and grow our team of exceptional bioinformatics analysts. This is a people leadership and function-building role first. The team has strong technical depth - we are looking for someone who can grow those people, earn the trust of senior leadership, advocate for the team’s best interests, and build the organizational muscle the function needs to scale. This is an opportunity to build a core function in a company where bioinformatics isn’t just support work - it’s central to the mission.

What You’ll Do

• Lead a small, senior team with a genuine commitment to individual growth - including regular development conversations, clear feedback, and helping people build careers.
• Collaboratively shape the future of the function at DNAstack
• Define and communicate the bioinformatics roadmap in partnership with product and engineering leadership, ensuring work is impactful and aligned with company priorities.
• Build and maintain credibility with senior leadership by proactively communicating the function's direction, surfacing risks and tradeoffs clearly, and making the case for staffing and investment with evidence
• Improve how bioinformatics projects are prioritized, scoped, tracked, and documented to promote sustainability and transparency.
• Collaborate closely with engineering, product, and design to deliver integrated, user-facing solutions informed by bioinformatics insights.
• Contribute to hiring, onboarding, and scaling the team as the company grows.
• Stay current on industry tools, standards, and datasets, bringing best practices into the team.
  

What We’re Looking For

• 3+ years managing technical teams, including the harder parts: career development conversations, navigating team dynamics, and holding people accountable while genuinely supporting their growth
• Ability to communicate bioinformatics priorities and constraints to technical and non-technical senior leadership and build trust through transparency and follow-through
• Strong understanding of genomics and bioinformatics, with the ability to engage in scientific discussions and shape technical direction.
• Experience with core bioinformatics tools and data types (e.g., BAM, VCF, FASTQ; samtools, bcftools, etc.) and pipeline frameworks (WDL, Nextflow, Snakemake, CWL).
• Knowledge of programming/scripting frameworks (Python, R, or similar), with enough depth to review work, guide decisions, and support debugging.
• Familiarity with cloud and/or HPC computing environments and reproducibility best practices.
• A strategic mindset with the ability to help prioritize work, scope new projects, and connect technical decisions to product and scientific goals
• 5+ years of hands-on experience in bioinformatics, with demonstrated expertise in NGS data analysis and production-scale pipelines
• Graduate degree (Master’s or PhD) in bioinformatics, computational biology, genetics, or a related field — or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to Have

• Previous experience in a startup or early-stage company.
• Statistical and visualization skills for exploring -omics datasets
• Experience with biological databases, data integration, or public datasets (gnomAD, TCGA, ENCODE).
• Familiarity with FAIR data principles and current genomics standards.

Why This Role Is Exciting

• Impact at scale: Your work will directly influence tools used by national and international genomics networks.
• Build something new: Shape a core function of the company from a small, senior team into a scalable, sustainable group.
• Cross-disciplinary collaboration: Work side by side with engineers, product managers, and scientists to turn bioinformatics into real-world solutions.
• Mission-driven: Contribute to solving rare disease, cancer, and infectious disease challenges by enabling precision medicine.
• Team culture: Enjoy a flexible, remote-friendly team culture along with a competitive salary, benefits, and employee stock option program. 

Where You'll Work

This role offers the flexibility of remote work, with the option to work in person from our Toronto office. This arrangement supports your needs and promotes a healthy work–life balance.

Eligibility

To be considered for this position, you must be eligible to work in Canada.

Benefits

• Remote friendly, with flexible hours and the opportunity to work on-site at our Toronto office
• Comprehensive health benefits: medical, dental and vision coverage for you and your dependents
• Three weeks vacation
• Unlimited sick days
• Maternity and parental leave top-up programs
• One-time remote office set-up stipend
• Career development and learning support
• Opportunity to participate in DNAstack's Employee Stock Option Program
• Opportunity to contribute to open science and global data-sharing efforts

The salary range for this role is $100,000 to $150,000. At DNAstack, we are dedicated to providing pay transparency to all candidates. Compensation at DNAstack is determined through various factors including but not limited to: comparable salary market data within Canada, technical skill assessment, a holistic view of previous work history, and internal pay equity with other DNAstack team members.

DNAstack is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. In accordance with the appropriate legislation in each jurisdiction in which we operate, we ensure that our team members are compensated within equal pay ranges for work of equal value, regardless of gender.

We regularly review our compensation practices to identify and address any pay equity gaps. Our approach considers skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions to ensure that compensation decisions are objective, transparent, and free from bias.

Pay equity is an ongoing process, and we are committed to maintaining compliance with legislative requirements while fostering a workplace that values fairness, respect, and inclusion.
At DNAstack, we are committed to building and fostering an inclusive, accessible environment for everyone. If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding accessibility needs at any stage of the interview process, please contact [email protected]
and we will work with you to meet your needs.

As a small but mighty team, we use AI-powered tools to help us stay organized and efficient during our hiring processes.  These tools help in areas such as sorting applications and highlighting matches to the role. These tools help us move faster, but they definitely don't make decisions for us -  every application is reviewed by a real human on our team.

Your privacy matters to us. Any information you share is handled according to Ontario privacy laws as well as our internal privacy practices. If you have any questions about how we use AI in our hiring process, please reach out to [email protected].

Note: this posting is for an existing vacancy that we are seeking to fill.

For compliance reasons, all offers of employment at DNAstack are conditional upon a successful background check that may consist of prior employment verification, reference checks, education confirmation, criminal background, or other information, as permitted by law.