Director of Bioinformatics & Genomics Research

Placements24; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Annual bonus

Medical, dental, vision insurance

Generous annual leave

Professional development support

Pension plan

Job summary

Placements24 in Cape Town seeks a Lead Bioinformatics Scientist to lead the design, development, and sustainment of scalable pipelines for WGS, RNA-Seq and related analyses. This senior role combines scientific leadership with hands‑on expertise to translate complex data into actionable insights.

You will mentor a team of bioinformaticians, collaborate with biologists and clinicians, oversee data governance, and drive continuous methodological innovation in a world‑class genomics environment.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. in a relevant field.
• Minimum 7 years of progressive bioinformatics experience.
• At least 3 years in leadership or supervisory role.
• Experience with large-scale genomic data analysis (variant calling, expression analysis).

Responsibilities

• Lead design, development, and maintenance of scalable bioinformatics pipelines for WGS, WES, RNA-Seq.
• Mentor and manage a team of bioinformatics scientists.
• Develop and implement statistical methods for complex datasets (population genetics, cancer genomics, epigenomics).
• Collaborate with biologists, clinicians, and data scientists to define research questions.
• Ensure quality, reproducibility, and integrity of analyses.
• Stay current with advancing bioinformatics tools and methodologies.
• Contribute to grant writing, manuscripts, and presentations.
• Oversee data storage, access, and security; enforce best practices in coding and version control.

Skills

Python

R

Perl

Shell scripting

Statistical modeling

Machine learning

Leadership

Project management

Education

Ph.D. in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Computer Science, Statistics, or related

Tools

GATK

Samtools

Bioconductor

Docker

AWS

GCP

Job description

Placements24 in Cape Town seeks a Lead Bioinformatics Scientist to lead the design, development, and sustainment of scalable pipelines for WGS, RNA-Seq and related analyses. This senior role combines scientific leadership with hands‑on expertise to translate complex data into actionable insights.

You will mentor a team of bioinformaticians, collaborate with biologists and clinicians, oversee data governance, and drive continuous methodological innovation in a world‑class genomics environment.