Scientific User Engagement Expert

Black Canyon Consulting LLC; Fairfax (VA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401k plan

Paid holidays

Vacation

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Black Canyon Consulting LLC is seeking a Scientific User Engagement Expert to support the modernization of one of the world’s largest public repositories of high-throughput sequencing data. The role focuses on engaging researchers, data submitters, developers, and other technical users through webinars, workshops, codeathons, scientific forums, and conferences.

The position will work with government leads, product teams, and SMM experts to gather input, edit materials, and move deliverables

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a scientific, technical, education, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
• At least three years of experience in a user-facing setting for scientific engagement or education.
• Experience planning and facilitating workshops, codeathons, webinars, conferences driven by community needs.
• Strong facilitation, presentation, writing, editing, and project coordination skills.
• Ability to translate complex scientific topics for diverse user groups and coordinate input from multiple experts.

Responsibilities

• Identify topics and opportunities to educate the genomics community on best practices for SRA.
• Plan, develop, and coordinate scientific user engagement activities such as workshops, webinars, forums.
• Identify user groups and coordinate participation by researchers, developers, institutional partners, and technical experts.
• Develop marketing copies, agendas, demos, notebooks, presentations, and peer-reviewed manuscripts.
• Capture discussions, decisions, technical findings, and follow-up actions and deadlines.
• Support government leads and subject-matter experts during engagement activities.
• Coordinate the development of user guidance, training resources, reports, and technical documentation.
• Organize authoring and review processes, including contributor coordination and deadlines.
• Draft or revise materials with expert review and government approval.
• Track participation, satisfaction, and adoption; communicate outcomes to product teams.

Skills

Facilitation

Public speaking

Technical coordination

Writing & editing

Project coordination

Workshop facilitation

Education

Bachelor’s degree in a scientific/technical/education field

Advanced degree preferred

Job description

Black Canyon Consulting (BCC) is seeking a Scientific User Engagement Expert to support the modernization of one of the world’s largest public repositories of high-throughput sequencing data.

This role will focus on engaging researchers, data submitters, developers, and other technical users by developing and leading collaborative activities such as webinars, workshops, codeathons, scientific forums, and conferences. The successful candidate will help organize participation, collaborate with subject-matter experts, capture key outcomes, and support the development of user guidance and technical materials.

The position will work closely with government leads, product teams, technical teams, and scientific subject-matter experts. It will coordinate collaborative content development by gathering expert input, organizing contributions, editing materials, and moving deliverables through review. The individual must also be prepared to draft or revise content when needed.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Identify key topics and other opportunities for educating the genomics community on best practices to maximize their experience when using the Sequence Read Archive (SRA)
• Plan, develop, and coordinate scientific user engagement activities such as workshops, classes, codeathons, webinars, scientific forums, and other collaborative events.
• Identify appropriate user groups, communities, use cases, and participation needs. Coordinate participation by researchers, data submitters, developers, institutional partners, and technical experts.
• Develop documentation such as marketing copies to advertise events, agendas, briefing materials, workshop materials such as application-based exercises, demos, jupyter notebooks, presentations, manuscripts for peer-reviewed publications, technical and help documentation, DIY(short) instructional videos and post-event summaries and reports.
• Capture key discussions, decisions, technical findings, and follow-up actions and deadlines.
• Support government leads and subject-matter experts during scientific and technical engagement activities.
• Coordinate the development of user guidance, training resources, reports, technical documentation, abstracts, and presentations.
• Organize collaborative authoring and review processes, including contributor coordination, comment resolution, and deadline management.
• Draft or revise materials when needed, with appropriate subject-matter expert review and government approval.
• Track participation, satisfaction, adoption, and other indicators of engagement effectiveness.
• Ensure that relevant user observations and event outcomes are communicated to product and technical teams.

Education and Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a scientific, technical, education, user engagement, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
• At least three years of experience in a user-facing setting for scientific engagement, user education, workshop facilitation, technical coordination, or a related area.
• Demonstrated experience planning and facilitating workshops, hackathons, webinars, conferences, or collaborative scientific events that are driven by community needs.
• Strong facilitation, presentation, writing, editing, and project coordination skills.
• Ability to understand complex scientific and technical topics and make them accessible to different user groups.
• Experience coordinating input from multiple subject-matter experts and contributors.
• Ability to manage competing priorities, scope changes, deadlines, and review cycles in a collaborative environment.
• Experience and understanding of community needs in genomics, bioinformatics, biomedical research, scientific data platforms, or government programs is strongly preferred.

Benefits and Salary

We attract the best people in the business with our competitive benefits package that includes medical, dental and vision coverage, 401k plan with employer contribution, paid holidays, vacation, and tuition reimbursement. We offer a competitive salary commensurate with experience.