We are seeking a computational scientist to the join Data & Computational Sciences (DCS) at the Boston, MA site of Vertex Pharmaceuticals. This individual is expected to lead software development across DCS and contribute to method and application development across the DCS portfolio, covering chemistry, biology and genomics and collaborate closely with our research computing department. A key function as software development leader will be to set standards and best practices for software development, and mentor other DCS members who are involved in software development. Focusing on cellular and tissue image analysis (addressing the development & implementation of image analysis methods and infrastructure) will be a key component of this position. The position calls for very strong software development skills, with experience in implementing algorithms, architecting large codebases and a solid understanding of software engineering practice. While the role will initially focus on image analysis, it is expected that over time, focus may shift to other areas in chemistry, biology or genomics, with machine learning being a common requirement in many of these areas. Thus, the ideal candidate must have a strong ability to translate scientific problems to a computational model, and subsequently implement robust software solutions.
Key Responsibilities:
• Lead software development across DCS by defining architectures, best practices and standards, and mentor other DCS members to ensure that software development within DCS is consistent
• Lead the development of analysis methods and infrastructure for cellular and tissue imaging, including identifying relevant algorithms and implementing custom solutions when required
• Interface with research computing to make effective use of cloud and high-performance computing resources
• Collaborate with project teams across the company, at all sites, to ensure that software and pipelines are effective and enable the project to move forward
• Identify and use machine learning methods to drive chemical structure optimization, to advance the discovery of medicines, regardless of modality, and enable other scientists within the team to benefit from those tools and methods in their projects.
Desired Skills:
• M.S. or above with a focus on Computer Science, Applied Math, Statistics, Computer Vision or a related computational field with 10+ years of research experience demonstrating an understanding of the application of image analysis and machine learning in a drug design and discovery setting.
• Strong software development skills, and experience in developing large codebases using modern software development principles (code review, source control, CI/CD) and guiding other developers in the group
• Experience with AWS technologies (e.g., Lambda, Fargate, S3, AWS Batch)
• Knowledge of algorithms for computer vision and/or image analysis for cellular and histopathology imaging, and experience implementing custom analysis methods
• Expertise in the use of computer vision and image analysis toolkits such as scikit-image, Fiji or OpenCV
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
Preferred Requirements
• Deep understanding of statistics and machine learning and underlying algorithms, ideally with application to chemical or biological problems
• Experience with commercial image analysis software (e.g., Halo, Definiens)
• Experience in computational chemistry or computational biology