Senior Scientist/Principal Scientist, Biomarker Discovery and Data Science

Company Summary:

Each day, the lives of more than 2 billion people across the globe are impacted by chronic diseases. Moreover, the economic burden on society of treating chronic disease is spinning out of control. Today, this dire situation appears unlikely to change as >95% of global healthcare costs are spent on treating rather than preventing chronic diseases. Flagship Labs 84, Inc. is a privately held early-stage company that is applying advanced biological and computational platforms to discover breakthroughs in detection of and intervention against the etiologies that drive progression from health to disease. Our goal is to leverage our proprietary platforms to disrupt the current approach of treating chronic disease after symptoms onset. We endeavor to provide true health care rather than sick care to individuals that are at risk of progressing to disease. FL84 was founded by Flagship Pioneering, was founded by Flagship Pioneering, an innovative enterprise that conceives, creates, resources, and grows first-in-category life sciences companies. 

Position Summary:

We are seeking a translational multiomics Sr. Scientist/Principal Scientist who is enthusiastic about developing, learning and applying computational skills to understand complex biological systems and their relationship to clinical state changes. The candidate will design and implement novel approaches to handling biological data, initially focused on biomarkers but rapidly expanding to multiple types of molecular and clinical data.  The role will focus on two main areas: (1) application of machine learning to develop generalizable models for discovery of biological markers of disease progression; and (2) deployment of those models in select therapeutic areas.  An ideal candidate will pride themselves on their ability to craft scientifically logical and creative stories out of complex data and convert them into executable experiments. The position will provide a unique opportunity to play a foundational role in the development of FL84’s preclinical platform and treat diseases before they become a burden to the patient or the healthcare system.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop and apply bioinformatics, computational biology, and machine learning tools to generate insights and hypotheses from high-dimensional molecular datasets, with an initial focus on proteomic data
• Improve model robustness to complex comorbidities, sources of variance (e.g., contributions of secreted proteins by multiple tissues), technical artifacts, and noise
• Align time-series biological data with clinically relevant inflection points identified in electronic health records, clinical trials, or other sources
• Identify and leverage internal and external datasets to address questions critical to FL84’s core objectives and generate testable hypotheses
• Develop clear, intuitive visualizations and communicate analysis results via presentations to a multi-disciplinary audience
• Cultivate a data-centric company philosophy by helping to maintain best practices for code development, data management, and infrastructure
• Monitor and evaluate new and emerging technologies and models and identify opportunities for collaboration within Flagship Pioneering companies, academia, and third parties

Minimum Qualifications:

• PhD or equivalent level of experience in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, Systems Biology, Computer Science, or related field
• To be considered for the rank of Principal Scientist requires at least 5 years post-doctoral experience in academia or industry
• Practical programming and scripting skills, preferably in Python and R
• Demonstrable knowledge of high-dimensional -omics data, including BAM, VCF, AnnData, PLINK, HAIL, Bioconductor, etc., and tools for their analysis
• The successful candidate will be self-motivated, highly collaborative and team oriented, with an ability to thrive in an entrepreneurial and multidisciplinary environment
• Ability to independently lead and run research projects, while maintaining close communication with team members
• Excellent communication and presentation skills. Must be able to speak and ideate with multi-disciplinary team including biologists. Must be able to think independently, work collaboratively and contribute to an active intellectual environment

Preferred Qualifications:

• Breadth of experience applying deep learning (DL) models to biological data
• For rank of Principal Scientist preferred domain knowledge in any of the following health-related specialties: cardiometabolic conditions, cancer, neurological or autoimmune diseases
• Experience with data derived from mass spectrometry, Somalogic, Olink, and other proteomic platforms
• Experience working with reference biological databases and datasets (e.g., UK Biobank, TCGA) is a strong plus
• Familiarity with AWS, GCP, or similar cloud-computing services. Experience with distributed, fault-tolerant architectures, like Apache Spark or Kubernetes. Workflow orchestration tools like Nextflow, Cromwell or Snakemake. Exposure to graph or NoSQL databases
• Knowledge of SQL, RDBMS design, and object-relational mapping is a plus

About Flagship

Flagship Pioneering is a bioplatform innovation company that invents and builds platform companies, each with the potential for multiple products that transform human health or sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, Flagship has originated and fostered more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in more than $90 billion in aggregate value. Many of the companies Flagship has founded have addressed humanity’s most urgent challenges: vaccinating billions of people against COVID-19, curing intractable diseases, improving human health, preempting illness, and feeding the world by improving the resiliency and sustainability of agriculture. Flagship has been recognized twice on FORTUNE’s “Change the World” list, an annual ranking of companies that have made a positive social and environmental impact through activities that are part of their core business strategies and has been twice named to Fast Company’s annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies. Learn more about Flagship at www.flagshippioneering.com.

Flagship Pioneering is committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

At Flagship, we recognize there is no perfect candidate. If you have some of the experience listed above but not all, please apply anyway. Experience comes in many forms, skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way. We are dedicated to building diverse and inclusive teams and look forward to learning more about your unique background.

Recruitment & Staffing Agencies: Flagship Pioneering and its affiliated Flagship Lab companies (collectively, “FSP”) do not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than candidates. The submission of unsolicited resumes by recruitment or staffing agencies to FSP or its employees is strictly prohibited unless contacted directly by Flagship Pioneering’s internal Talent Acquisition team. Any resume submitted by an agency in the absence of a signed agreement will automatically become the property of FSP, and FSP will not owe any referral or other fees with respect thereto.