Junior Computational Biologist

Job Description

Junior Computational Biologist | Astrix Technology

The Tone:
This is a contract role at Astrix Technology, located remotely within the U.S. with an option for onsite work in South San Francisco, CA. Astrix Technology is a leading biotechnology research organization focused on refining how cellular states are quantified and validated. This role is crucial for enhancing the reliability of automated cell-state classification frameworks by distinguishing true biological signal from technical variation in large-scale single-cell atlases.

The TL;DR
• Role: Contract
• Type: Full-time
• Location: Remote
• Pay: $30–$34 hourly
• Mission: Enhance the robustness and interpretability of single-cell transcriptomic data analysis.
• Tech Stack: Scanpy, AnnData, Pandas, scikit-learn, SciPy

What You’ll Actually Do
• Evaluate: Systematically evaluate and benchmark computational approaches for quantifying phenotype activation across single-cell transcriptomic datasets.
• Establish: Establish rigorous statistical baselines and negative-control frameworks to improve the robustness of automated cell-state classification methods.
• Develop: Develop or refine computational methods to address limitations in current approaches.
• Design: Design strategies to distinguish genuine biological signatures from stochastic or technical noise.
• Present: Present findings in internal scientific reviews and contribute to potential conference abstracts or peer-reviewed publications.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Master’s degree with ongoing PhD pursuit, or recent PhD graduate, in Computational Biology, Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related quantitative discipline.
• Experience: Extensive hands-on experience in single-cell data analysis.
• Skills: Strong proficiency in Scanpy, AnnData, and Pandas; strong proficiency implementing statistical and machine learning models using scikit-learn and SciPy; demonstrated commitment to reproducible research practices and well-organized code; ability to clearly communicate complex computational concepts to interdisciplinary scientific teams.
• Bonus: Background knowledge in cell biology and/or immunology; experience with hypothesis testing, noise modeling, and benchmarking computational tools; familiarity with Explainable AI (XAI) approaches or large-scale biological datasets; demonstrated ability to build or extend novel bioinformatics pipelines.