part-time contractor, bioinformatic product development

Company Description

Fairfield Bio is building the world's first marketplace for non-human genomic data. We connect governments, gene banks, research institutions, and Indigenous and local communities that hold out-of-distribution biological data, with researchers in agriculture, animal health, industrial biotech, academia, and pharma; everyone that needs that data to move R&D forward. At the same time, our priority is to ensure that value flows back to the entities that produce it, and/or hold sovereign authority over its use.

Together with development partners, Fairfield is developing a platform for this exchange, optimized to balance wide discovery and sovereign data security. The tricky bit is turning Access and Benefit-Sharing principles from international policy frameworks into standardized, legal, and enforceable contracts that can be signed by both a national gene bank and a private seed company.

We are a small team, with pre-seed funding and a meaningful runway. The founders come from Ginkgo Biosecurity, the CDC, and MIT among other places; we are already in deep discussions with partners on several continents.

Role Description

This part-time, remote contract role focuses on bioinformatic product development to support Fairfield Bio’s platform development. The contractor will help to design, implement, and refine analytical workflows for searching and analyzing OOD genomic data.

Activities include validating methods with test datasets, and documenting reproducible pipelines, product features, et al. The role involves collaborating with the founders to translate research and customer requirements into technical specifications, preparing user documentation, and suggesting improvements to data models and product functionality.

The contractor is expected to work with our development partners directly, manage priorities independently, meet agreed milestones, and communicate progress clearly in a remote setting.

Location and hours

 You do NOT need to be in the United States for this (it's maybe better if you're not!) but you need to be able to work with us in Eastern US Time zone. This is part-time, and initially around a specific project, but the company is growing, and the right person in the right role could grow with it.

Qualifications

• Candidates should possess strong bioinformatics and sequencing knowledge, including knowledge and/or experience with next-generation sequencing workflows and common bioinformatics tools or libraries.
• Candidates should be familiar with data analysis skills and methods, including working with large biological datasets, and how bfx users work with data.
• Candidates should possess research skills, including literature review, experimental design support, and the ability to evaluate and integrate new analytical approaches into products.
• Relevant qualifications include prior experience in bioinformatics, computational biology, or a related field, but *must also* have some meaningful experience with product development.
• Ability to work independently in a remote setting, communicate technical concepts clearly to diverse stakeholders, and meet deadlines in a contract-based, part-time capacity.