Senior Fullstack Software Engineer

The Centre for Population Genomics focuses on the development of cutting-edge tools and resources to facilitate the conversion of genomic data into improved diagnosis and treatment for Australians, the field known as genomic medicine. Ultimately, the Centre will generate and manage the largest sets of genomic and clinical data ever assembled in Australia, and apply these to solve a wide variety of scientific and medical problems. The Centre’s staff will operate from two physical sites: Garvan in Sydney, and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) in Melbourne.

The Centre for Population Genomics is in the process of launching the following efforts:

• A pilot program to sequence and analyze the whole genomes of 10,000 Australians from diverse populations, which currently are almost completely absent in genomic reference datasets. This will directly translate to significantly improved diagnosis of rare diseases for these groups.

• Over the next 5-10 years we anticipate that genome sequences will be generated for more than a million Australians, resulting in a raw dataset of about 100 PB. The platforms you’ll help build will need to scale accordingly.

• Building and applying new methods to directly improve the diagnosis of children affected by rare genetic diseases, such as the use of nanopore long-read DNA sequencing and single-cell RNA sequencing. This work will provide families across Australia with answers to their child’s mystery illness

THE OPPORTUNITY

The Centre for Population Genomics is looking for a Senior FullStack Software Engineer. You’ll be responsible for supporting large scale genomic analysis methods (using and extending frameworks like Hail) in conjunction with web-based tools (like the gnomAD browser or seqr) for providing intuitive access to complex scientific datasets.

This role will be a part of a small, high-energy software engineering team that will work in close collaboration with the Centre’s genomic analysis teams. The latter will consist of computational biologists and population geneticists, who will iterate with you on analysis methods, tools, interfaces, and visualizations. There will be a huge opportunity to work on the infrastructure and tools that support impactful medical research. All software developed by the Centre will be open-source and designed using best practices to ensure widespread use by the wider scientific community, and rapid translation into impact on human biology and medicine. You will work in an environment that combines the intellectual freedom and collaboration of academia with rigorous, open software development practices.

To make sure our solutions prove useful for the wider genomics community, we’ll be working closely with partners like the Broad Institute. The role will report to the Software Lead, and will interact with the Centre Director, Daniel MacArthur, who previously led a team at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Boston that was responsible for the development and open release of the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD), one of the most widely-used resources in human genetics in delivering large scale genomic analysis solutions. It will also be essential to interact closely with other members of the Centre’s software team and genomic analysis teams, and with other computational groups at Garvan and MCRI.

Salary: Up to $134,000 + 11.5% super + salary packaging (depending on experience)

Employment Type: 3 year term contract with possibility to extend

SNAPSHOT OF BENEFITS

• Generous salary packaging to save you income tax on your wages thereby boosting your monthly take home pay (max. $15,900 general expenses + $2,650 meals/accom)

• Ample opportunities for on-going training and development

• Stimulating, diverse and highly international research environment

• Flexible work arrangements e.g. start / finish times

• 18 weeks paid parental leave for both parents including paid superannuation

• A range of additional leave types to meet your personal needs including cultural leave, conference leave, community service and study leave

• Discounted Health Insurance

• Lifestyle discounts with our community partners

WHAT YOU WILL DO

The key skills and experience include:

• Working closely with computational biologists to translate their requirements into scalable cloud-based infrastructure (e.g. metadata databases, workflow management systems on multiple cloud providers) that can be deployed in production on massive genomic datasets.

• Working with other engineers to ensure our systems are scalable and performant.

• Implementing, debugging, optimizing, deploying, monitoring, and maintaining your solutions, picking the most appropriate technologies for the task.

• Tracking and communicating progress regularly, flagging risks and roadblocks early on

ABOUT YOU

• A BCST / BIT / BE degree in computer science, software engineering, information technology, bioinformatics engineering, biomedical engineering or a related field.

• Solid experience with Python, or other prominent languages such as C++, Go, Scala, Typescript. Understanding of how to build and test performant, decoupled, maintainable code.

• Experience with databases such as Postgres, MariaDB, MySQL, including query optimisation techniques, such as indexes and joins. Garvan Institute of Medical Research Page 3 of 4 POSITION

• Experience with infrastructure-as-code deployments, including in cloud environments like Google Cloud, Azure, or AWS is a plus.

• Ability to prioritize across multiple simultaneous projects and keep stakeholders in the loop.

• Keen interest in open source and desire to learn new technologies and understand / enhance large existing code bases.

• Experience with bioinformatics analysis methods and workflows is a plus.

• A pragmatic approach to software driven by project needs and timelines rather than a predetermined commitment to specific technical stacks.

• Ability to work effectively in a fully remote team, including strong communication skills, both written and verbal.

• Proficiency in front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS, Typescript and frameworks like React, Angular, or Vue.js.

ABOUT GARVAN

Garvan Institute of Medical Research is an independent Medical Research Institute (MRI) in Sydney, delivering scientific and clinical impact on a global basis and in partnership with organisations that share our vision. We are proud to be one of Australia’s largest and most highly regarded MRI’s.

Our vision is global leadership in discoveries to impact and our enduring purpose is to impact human health, by harnessing information encoded in our genome.

We seek to see our world-class discovery research achieve life-changing impacts, not only for individual patients with rare diseases, but for the many thousands affected by complex, common disease.

Garvan promotes a diverse workplace and is committed to the principles of equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging. We are always looking for culture ‘add’, not culture ‘fit’ and are building diverse teams with great sets of complementary styles and skills to help deliver our important work effectively.

HOW TO APPLY

To apply for this position, please submit your application with a CV and cover letter as one document, stating why you are interested in this role. We are reviewing applications as they are received. If you think you’re the right person for this role, we’d love to hear how your capabilities, achievements and experience set you apart. Only applicants with full working rights in Australia are eligible to apply for this role.