Data Steward - Sequencing & Phenotyping

Delft University of Technology (TU Delft); Delft; On-site; EUR 41,000 - 64,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Excellent pension scheme

Flexible working week

Leave hours per year

Education opportunities

Discounts with health insurers

Parental leave

Job summary

Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and CropXR invite applications for a Data Steward who will help researchers organise, describe and share plant research data, sequencing and phenotyping data.

You will work across disciplines with bioinformatics and infrastructure teams, promoting FAIR data practices and guiding data publication to repositories like ENA or NCBI as part of CropXR initiatives.

Qualifications

• Completed MSc in plant sciences, biology, bioinformatics, biotechnology, genetics, computational biology or data science.
• Strong understanding of biological research data and metadata management.
• Familiarity with structured data or scripting (Python, R, JSON, CSV, APIs) is useful.
• Excellent English and ability to collaborate across disciplines.

Responsibilities

• Support researchers with data management throughout the research lifecycle from design to reuse.
• Work with sequencing and phenotyping data and associated metadata.
• Describe experiments and datasets using MIAPPE and ISA standards.
• Make data FAIR by organizing files, naming conventions, identifiers and documentation.
• Review datasets with researchers and advise on repositories and access conditions.
• Prepare datasets for the CropXR Resilience Hub and contribute to data-management guidelines.

Skills

Data stewardship

Metadata management

FAIR data principles

Communication in English

Education

MSc or equivalent

Tools

MIAPPE

ISA standards

Data standards

Job description

TU Delft & CropXR are looking for a Data Steward with a strong affinity for plant research, sequencing and phenotyping data. You will work closely with researchers to make sure that valuable research data is well organised, understandable, findable and reusable.

Job description

Your responsibilities

• Supporting researchers with data management throughout the research lifecycle, from experiment design and data collection to publication and long-term reuse.
• Working with sequencing and phenotyping data, including sample and plant-material information, experimental metadata, sensor and imaging data, and files such as FASTQ, BAM and VCF.
• Helping researchers describe experiments and datasets using consistent metadata and relevant standards, including MIAPPE, ISA and the CropXR Metadata Management Procedure.
• Making research data more FAIR by establishing practical conventions for file organisation, naming, identifiers, metadata, versioning and documentation.
• Reviewing datasets with researchers, identifying missing information, and advising on suitable formats, repositories, access conditions and data publication, including submissions to repositories such as ENA or NCBI.
• Preparing and connecting datasets for the CropXR Resilience Hub and contributing to CropXR-wide data-management guidelines and best practices.

Your approach

You combine scientific curiosity with a pragmatic, service-oriented mindset. You enjoy talking to researchers about their experiments, asking the questions that uncover missing context, and translating FAIR data principles into practical actions.

You are comfortable working across disciplines and can communicate with experimental scientists, bioinformaticians, data scientists and infrastructure developers.

Success means that good data management becomes a natural part of the CropXR research workflow: datasets are well described, can move smoothly into analysis and repositories, and remain understandable and reusable by other researchers.

Job requirements

You have a completed university degree at MSc level, or an equivalent level of academic training, in a relevant field such as plant sciences, biology, bioinformatics, biotechnology, genetics, computational biology, data science or a related discipline. You have a good understanding of how biological research data is generated and used. You do not need to develop sequencing pipelines or phenotyping platforms yourself, but you should understand sequencing and phenotyping data well enough to communicate effectively with both researchers and technical teams.

You are comfortable with metadata, FAIR data principles and research data repositories. Experience with relevant standards and data-management approaches is an advantage, but a willingness and ability to learn is more important. Some familiarity with structured data or scripting — for example Python, R, command-line tools, JSON, CSV or APIs — is useful for understanding and validating datasets. This is not primarily a software-development role. You communicate clearly in English and are comfortable working in a collaborative, interdisciplinary research environment.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)

Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration.

Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) brings together three scientific disciplines. Combined, they reinforce each other and are the driving force behind the technology we all use in our daily lives. Technology such as the electricity grid, which our faculty is helping to make completely sustainable and future-proof. At the same time, we are developing the chips and sensors of the future, whilst also setting the foundations for the software technologies to run on this new generation of equipment – which of course includes AI. Meanwhile we are pushing the limits of applied mathematics, for example mapping out disease processes using single cell data, and using mathematics to simulate gigantic ash plumes after a volcanic eruption. In other words: there is plenty of room at the faculty for ground-breaking research. We educate innovative engineers and have excellent labs and facilities that underline our strong international position. In total, more than 1000 employees and 4,000 students work and study in this innovative environment.

CropXR

CropXR was launched in 2023 to help make agricultural production less vulnerable to climate change and less dependent on artificial fertilisers and chemical pesticides. It is a collaboration between the universities of Amsterdam, Delft, Wageningen and Utrecht, together with partners from the plant-breeding sector. CropXR brings together plant sciences, computational and data sciences, social sciences and industry to develop more resilient crops and contribute to sustainable agriculture.

Conditions of employment

• Duration of contract is 2 years. Temporary.
• A job of 38-40 hours per week.
• A salary based on Scale 10 of the CAO for Dutch Universities with a salary between €3706 - €5760 gross per month based on a fulltime contract (38 hours), plus 8% holiday allowance and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%.
• An excellent pension scheme via the ABP.
• The possibility to compile an individual employment package every year.
• Discount with health insurers on supplemental packages.
• Flexible working week.
• Every year, 232 leave hours (at 38 hours). You can also sell or buy additional leave hours via the individual choice budget.
• Plenty of opportunities for education, training and courses.
• Partially paid parental leave
• Attention for working healthy and energetically with the vitality program.

Additional information

If you would like more information about this vacancy or the selection procedure, please contact Prof. Marcel Reinders, via [e-mail]. This position is with the Delft Bioinformatics Lab, part of the Computer Science department of Delft University of Technology, under the supervision of Prof. Marcel Reinders and Thomas Abeel ([e-mail]). In addition, the position is embedded in DataXR, part of the national CropXR programme, for which Auke Damstra ([e-mail]) is CTO.