Translational Bioinformatician (Director/Senior Director)

Director/Senior Director, Translational  Bioinformatics
Dragonfly Therapeutics seeks a highly skilled Director/Senior Director, Translational  Bioinformatics. Working closely with the Translational Medicine and Clinical Development teams, the successful candidate will leverage their expertise in computational biology/genomics to deeply analyze clinical/translational datasets to: evaluate drug mechanism of action, define target populations, and discover predictive biomarkers. This role will report to the Head of Translational Medicine, is hands-on and requires frequent collaboration with multiple internal groups. The successful candidate can work independently and thrives in a proactive can-do culture. Deep scientific rigor and a thorough understanding of drug development are key success factors. The work will be fast-paced with evolving needs, requiring adaptability, curiosity, and grace under pressure. This role is an exciting opportunity to be a critical part of the clinical development group, involved in the design, execution, analysis, and reporting of Dragonfly’s clinical studies.

Role and Responsibilities:

• Oversee the design, development, and implementation of bioinformatics algorithms, methods, and workflows to support translational data analysis
• Design and implement bioinformatics pipelines for processing and analyzing data from clinical trials
• Propose, lead, and execute integrative analysis of complex multimodal datasets to connect findings to clinical endpoints
• Analyze clinical, translational and pre-clinical biomarker data to characterize disease and target biology, to define drug mechanism of action and to identify biomarkers of response and resistance
• Develop/apply machine learning models to multi-omic datasets to generate insights
• Build, improve and maintain databases and custom applications (eg. R Shiny apps) to maximize data accessibility and visibility by key stakeholders and project teams
• Develop and maintain best practices for data processing, analysis, and management, ensuring that all data is of high quality and properly documented
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams as well as work with external partners to solve problems using cutting-edge data visualization and analysis
• Collaborate closely with Translational Medicine and Oncology Research scientists to ensure that data is effectively utilized for high level impact
• Keep up-to-date with the latest advances in bioinformatics, cancer biology, and related fields, and incorporate new techniques and technologies into our workflows
• Ensure that the company's research and development programs are well-supported and enabled by state-of-the-art bioinformatics capabilities
• Work collaboratively with cross-functional teams to identify and prioritize bioinformatics needs and develop and implement strategies to address them

Qualifications:

• PhD in Bioinformatics, Computational/Systems Biology, Biostatistics, or a related field
• At least 5 years of experience within industry drug discovery and development setting, with direct experience with clinical trials in Oncology
• Experience using computational methods to extract insights from large datasets and exploratory biomarker analyses
• Experience applying ML/AI approaches to biomarker discovery
• Familiarity with industry standards and regulatory guidance for analysis and reporting of clinical biomarker data is desired
• Strong proficiency in programming languages such as Python and R
• Proven expertise in machine learning and data analysis techniques
• Expertise in data workflow management systems a plus
• Team oriented, flexible, able to adapt to rapidly evolving goals and challenges
• Ability to communicate complex ideas with an interdisciplinary team
• Experience working in a fast-paced, startup environment strongly preferred
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