Junior Algorithm Development Intern

What if your internship project could influence how genomic variants are detected in a real clinical technology?

At SOPHiA GENETICS, we are building the future of AI-assisted, data-driven medicine. Our technology helps healthcare professionals make sense of complex multimodal data, with the ambition of improving outcomes for patients with cancer and rare diseases.

Behind that mission are some difficult scientific and computational questions.

One of them is this: how do we make sure our algorithms identify complex genomic variants as accurately and efficiently as possible?

That is where you come in.

Join our Data Science - Algorithm Development team in Rolle, Switzerland, for a six-month internship as a Junior Algorithm Developer.

You will work on a real challenge within our Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) product: benchmarking our in-house structural variant (SV) calling solutions against leading external tools for germline variant calling.

The evidence you generate will help our team understand where different approaches perform well, where they do not, and ultimately inform decisions about how our WGS technology should evolve.

You will get hands-on with genomic data, algorithms and production-scale computational infrastructure.

You will:

• Build the benchmark. Install and run external WGS variant-calling pipelines on SOPHiA GENETICS' compute infrastructure and create a reproducible setup for comparison.
• Put the tools to the test. Evaluate germline variant-calling accuracy and runtime using our data and reference sets.
• Go beyond "which tool is better?" Compare external approaches with our in-house SV calling solutions and investigate where each performs differently - and why.
• Turn data into decisions. Translate your results into evidence-based recommendations that can help improve the strategy, design, implementation and performance of SV calling within our WGS germline products.
• Make your work visible. Present your findings to colleagues across the team and department, including senior management.

Requirements

You might be studying bioinformatics, computational biology, computer science, statistics or a related field. You do not need to arrive knowing everything about structural variant calling - we care just as much about how you think and how quickly you learn.

You will probably enjoy this internship if:

• You like digging into data and asking "why?", rather than stopping when you have a result.
• Statistics and probability make sense to you, and you enjoy using them to solve real problems.
• You are comfortable working with the UNIX command line and have some experience analysing larger datasets.
• You have experience with Python or statistical libraries - or are motivated to deepen it.
• You are curious about genomics; knowledge of structural variant calling, WGS or VCF is a plus rather than a prerequisite.
• You have a scientist's mindset: you are willing to ask questions that may sound naïve, test assumptions, and report what the data actually shows, even when the answer is not the one you expected.
• You communicate and collaborate well with others and are comfortable working in English.

Benefits

Six months from now, we want you to leave knowing considerably more than when you arrived.

You will learn how an end-to-end NGS data-analysis workflow is built and used in an industrial setting, develop a deeper understanding of state-of-the-art structural variant calling tools and algorithms, and gain practical experience designing a rigorous benchmarking study.

More importantly, you will see how scientific evidence becomes a product decision.

You'll work in an environment where genomics, data science, AI and cloud technologies come together, alongside people solving these problems every day.

Company-wide events and activities - take part in company events, Town Halls, internal initiatives and social activities alongside the rest of our employees.

All our internships and apprenticeships are paid, with compensation aligned with local market practices and standards.

Location: Rolle, Switzerland

Start: As soon as possible

Contract type: Internship contract, full time, 6 months.

Apply with your CV and any supporting information you'd like us to consider.

Selected candidates will meet members of our Talent Management Coordinator, the hiring leader and relevant colleagues and stakeholders during the interview process.

English is our primary working language, so please submit your CV in English.