Research Assistant/Technician 3

Staff - Non Union

Job Category
Non Union Technicians and Research Assistants

Job Profile
Non Union Salaried - Research Assistant /Technician 3

Job Title
Research Assistant/Technician 3

Department
Lim Laboratory | Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | Faculty of Medicine

Compensation Range
$4,434.02 - $5,228.81 CAD Monthly

Posting End Date
February 28, 2024

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the Posting End Date above.

Job End Date

Feb 28, 2025

At UBC, we believe that attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce is key to the successful pursuit of excellence in research, innovation, and learning for all faculty, staff and students. Our commitment to employment equity helps achieve inclusion and fairness, brings rich diversity to UBC as a workplace, and creates the necessary conditions for a rewarding career. 

The Dr. Lim Laboratory, in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of British Columbia is recruiting a bioinformatics who will be creating custom bioinformatics programming solutions, and adopting existing bioinformatics software solutions for genomics research in the lab.

Job Summary

We are looking for a bioinformatician to work with our interdisciplinary team at UBC and Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre (BCGSC).  We are seeking a creative, experienced, and dedicated individual to play a key role in curating genomics, transcriptomics and epigenomics data and developing and deploying our cancer genomics bioinformatics workflows on such data. The successful candidate will join Dr. Emilia Lim’s group, and work as part of the work in collaboration with bioinformaticians and wet bench scientists at UBC and at BCGSC. As part of the team, you will help find and develop computational solutions, pushing the scientific edge of cancer genomics research. Our laboratory has recently made meaningful advances in understanding of how air pollution promotes the development of lung cancers. We are interested in expanding upon this work, to explore how environmental exposures impact our genomes, transcriptomes and epigenomes to drive age-related diseases, such as cancer.

Organizational Status

Working as a bioinformatician, independently carrying out programming tasks under the instructions and oversight of the principal investigator.

Work Performed

• Download and curate data sets
• Design, plan, implement and maintain automated bioinformatics pipelines to meet the objectives of the project
• Develop and test code, and implement software
• Evaluate third-party software and incorporate new systems
• Produce thorough but concise written documentation of algorithms, validations, SOPs, and other processes and procedures as required
• Performs additional responsibilities as needed, aligning with the qualifications and requirements of positions within this classification.

Consequence of Error/Judgement:
Failure to maintain a high standard of work with consistent communication between team members and the supervisor will result in delays and quality of research output, which may impact the working conditions, reputation, and funding for the research group and UBC.

Supervision Received

Supervision from the principal investigator. Results reviewed monthly and annually for achievement of overall objectives.

Supervision Given

May help to supervise undergraduate trainees and/or junior software developers.

Minimum Qualifications
Completion of a relevant technical program or a university degree in a relevant discipline and a minimum three years of related experience or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one’s own

- Demonstrates a commitment to enhancing one’s own awareness, knowledge, and skills related to equity, diversity, and inclusion

Preferred Qualifications

• A degree in the relevant field Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Computer Science, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology would be a strong asset.

Core skills and abilities:

• Expertise with R.
• Comfortable working in a Unix environment, including experience with shell scripting and common command-line tools
• Functional knowledge of distributed version control systems, such as SVN or GIT
• Familiarity with molecular and cellular biology
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Demonstrated ability to efficiently organize work assignments and establish priorities
• Demonstrated interpersonal skills including the ability to work effectively with others in a team environment

Additional assets:

• Able to provide links to code samples via GitHub or another open repository

• Familiarity with the development, testing, and maintenance of academic open source code
• Familiarity in next-generation sequencing
• Experience with software testing
• Experience with Agile software practices