Staff Research Software Engineer #2569

GRAIL is a healthcare company whose mission is to detect cancer early, when it can be cured. GRAIL is focused on alleviating the global burden of cancer by developing pioneering technology to detect and identify multiple deadly cancer types early. The company is using the power of next-generation sequencing, population-scale clinical studies, and state-of-the-art computer science and data science to enhance the scientific understanding of cancer biology, and to develop its multi-cancer early detection blood test. GRAIL is headquartered in Menlo Park, CA with locations in Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and the United Kingdom. GRAIL, LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN). For more information, please visit www.grail.com.

Grail is seeking a Senior or Lead (Staff) Research Software Engineer to support R&D. As part of the Bioinformatics and Data Science team, you will work closely with a group of Computational Biologists, Data Scientists, and Statisticians that develop scientific software, perform data analysis, and train machine learning models on the way to pioneering new diagnostic products. In this role, you will support scientific endeavors by building out custom computational tools and infrastructure to facilitate high throughput data processing and machine learning experiments. 

The ideal candidate will bring a passion for good software infrastructure, problem-solving, and contribute to research and  scientific breakthroughs while building a culture of developing quality software and reproducible research. Due to the highly connected nature of this position, the candidate should be a strong communicator with experience working with multidisciplinary teams. As a Research Software Engineer, you will be in a position to empower the engineering and scientist teams with the platforms they need as we work towards detecting cancer early!
Responsibilties

• Work with research teams to identify pain points or limitations in performing computational experiments and analysis. 
• Translate feature requests and issues into software solutions by designing and implementing infrastructure and tooling to support research efforts. 
• Evolve existing infrastructure used to perform analytics and machine learning to build new features and scale with larger datasets.
• Set up and maintain scientific computing environments (R, R studio, Jupyter notebooks, etc.) with integration into existing CI/CD frameworks. 
• Oversee and develop good software practices including implementing automated testing, software releases, code style guides, and static analyses.
• Help evolve code and environment architectural design as a member of a growing team of 70+ software and bioinformatics engineers.

Your background should include

• Computer Science, Engineering, Bioinformatics, or related degree with at least 5 years of professional experience in an Research Software Engineer, DevOps, Infrastructure Software Engineer, or similar role.
• Strong programming skills in R, Python, or BASH languages, and at least one system-level programming language like Go, Java, or C++.
• Demonstrated experience in designing, developing, testing, and deploying applications to meet scientific user needs.
• A commitment to high-quality professionally engineered software.
• Practical experience setting up continuous integration systems, along with expertise in at lease one build tool (e.g. Bazel (preferred), Buck, Maven, Gradle).
• Good understanding of container orchestration through Docker and cloud technologies.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to help developers from a wide range of software development backgrounds. 

Bonus skills and experience

• Experience with whole genome sequencing, whole exome sequencing, bisulfite sequencing, and whole transcriptome sequencing data.
• Expertise with scientific computing tools: Tensorflow, NumPy, PyTorch, Jupyter, R Notebook, etc.
• Familiarity with AWS services, best practices, and security. 

The estimated, full-time, annual base pay scale for candidates located in either the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, WA. or the New York Metropolitan Area, is $173,000 - $228,000.  

The estimated, full-time, annual base pay scale for candidates located in any other US City is $148,000-$193,800 

Actual base pay will consider skills, experience, and location. 



Based on the role, colleagues may be eligible to participate in an annual bonus plan tied to company and individual performance, or an incentive plan. We also offer a long-term incentive plan to align company and colleague success over time.

In addition, GRAIL offers a progressive benefit package, including flexible time-off, a 401k with a company match, and alongside our medical, dental, vision plans, carefully selected mindfulness offerings.

GRAIL is an Equal Employment Office and Affirmative Action Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status. We will reasonably accommodate all individuals with disabilities so that they can participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation. GRAIL maintains a drug-free workplace.


Following extensive monitoring, consideration of business implications, and advice from internal and external experts, GRAIL US has made the decision to require that all U.S. employees be “Fully Vaccinated” with the COVID-19 vaccine. “Fully Vaccinated” is defined as two weeks after both doses of a two-dose vaccine (e.g. Pfizer or Moderna) or two weeks since a single-dose vaccine (e.g. Johnson & Johnson) has been administered. Absent a qualifying exemption, all GRAIL US employees are to comply with this requirement, including providing documentation of such vaccination status, as a condition of employment. Anyone unable to be vaccinated, either because of a sincerely held religious belief or a medical condition or disability that prevents them from being vaccinated, can request a reasonable accommodation for consideration by GRAIL.