Volunteer Research Data Scientist - Microbiome Analytics

Summary There is no pay associated with this position. This position serves as a Without Compensation Research Data Scientist within the Office of Research and Development (ORD). The VA Research Program strives to promote Veteran‑centered care to improve patient experiences and outcomes across VA healthcare and community settings and to advance value‑driven care by providing Veterans the highest quality care at the lowest financial burden. Qualifications To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement – 07/21/2026. Basic Requirements United States Citizenship: Non‑citizens may only be appointed when it is not possible to recruit qualified citizens in accordance with VA Policy. You may qualify based on your experience and/or education as described below: Individual Occupational Requirement – Education: Degree in Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Data Science, or a directly related field. The degree must be in a major field of study (at least at the baccalaureate level) that is appropriate for the position. OR Combination of education and experience: Courses equivalent to a major field of study (30 semester hours) as shown above, plus additional education or appropriate experience. Reference: For more information on this qualification standard, please visit The full performance level of this vacancy is 00. Physical Requirements: The work is predominantly sedentary, typically the employee sits comfortably to do the work; however, there will be some walking, standing, bending, and carrying of items of moderate weight such as large binders, banker‑style file boxes, meeting materials, papers, books, or small parts. Hand and eye coordination for delicate testing procedures may be the only special physical demand required to perform the work. Duties Processing raw microbiome sequencing data using established bioinformatics pipelines, performing sequence quality control, taxonomic and functional profiling, and preparing analysis‑ready feature tables. Conducting routine statistical summaries, including diversity calculations, simple comparisons between groups, and preliminary visualizations to support downstream modeling performed by senior team members. Assisting with transferring, merging, and validating microbiome outputs within the secure VA computing environment, ensuring consistency with clinical datasets prepared by the statistics team. Working closely with the Senior Statistician to troubleshoot data issues, adjust preprocessing steps as needed, and produce preliminary figures and descriptive results for internal discussions. Contributing to the preparation of study reports, abstracts, and manuscript supplements by generating tables and visual materials. Supporting ongoing project needs by implementing minor analytical tasks, updating pipelines as new samples or methods become available. Coordinating with investigators to ensure that microbiome data products align with project requirements. Work Schedule: Full time, Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 4:30 pm (Without compensation). This is not a virtual position. Relocation/Recruitment Incentives: Not Authorized. Permanent Change of Station (PCS): Not Authorized. #J-18808-Ljbffr U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs