Computational Scientist

Astrix is recruiting for an unnamed life sciences technology company seeking a Computational Scientist. The role analyzes microbiome and metagenomic data, interprets biological findings, and supports AI-enabled research and computational workflow development.

Responsibilities

• Analyze large-scale shotgun metagenomic sequencing datasets to characterize microbial community composition, functional capacity, and ecological dynamics
• Investigate relationships between microbial taxa, metabolic pathways, and biological phenotypes across diverse sample types including human, environmental, agricultural, and industrial microbiomes
• Perform comparative analyses across cohorts, interventions, timepoints, and environmental conditions to identify biologically meaningful shifts in microbial community structure and function
• Evaluate microbial signatures associated with disease states, therapeutic interventions, ecological succession, environmental perturbations, and host-microbe interactions
• Interpret microbial functional profiles, pathway enrichments, antimicrobial resistance markers, virulence factors, and other biologically relevant features derived from sequencing data
• Identify and assess sources of contamination, batch effects, sequencing artifacts, experimental biases, and confounding variables that may impact biological conclusions
• Review and synthesize scientific literature and public datasets to validate findings and establish evidence-based biological interpretations
• Assess the strength of evidence supporting microbiome-related hypotheses and critically evaluate analytical conclusions generated from complex sequencing datasets
• Contribute subject matter expertise to AI-enabled research programs by translating microbiome workflows, analytical decision-making, and biological interpretation into structured scientific processes
• Collaborate closely with computational biologists, machine learning scientists, and software engineers on projects involving biological data interpretation and scientific knowledge extraction
• Support development and optimization of workflows for taxonomic profiling, functional annotation, metagenome assembly, strain tracking, and multi-omics integration
• Generate clear, scientifically rigorous reports and communicate findings to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Skills

• Master's or PhD in Microbiology, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Microbial Ecology, Genetics, or a related scientific discipline
• 3+ years of experience working with microbiome, microbial genomics, or metagenomics datasets in academic, biotech, pharmaceutical, or industry settings
• Demonstrated expertise through publications, research projects, product development, or industry contributions
• Strong understanding of microbial ecology, microbial physiology, host-microbe interactions, and microbiome study design
• Experience analyzing next-generation sequencing datasets, including 16S and/or shotgun metagenomics approaches
• Proficiency in Python, R, or similar scientific computing environments
• Familiarity with microbial taxonomic profiling, functional annotation, pathway analysis, diversity metrics, and community-level interpretation

Company Overview

Company H1B Sponsorship