Remote Lead Computational Biologist | Genomics & ML Leadership

Placements24; Gauteng; Hybrid; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private health insurance

Generous retirement plan

Significant paid time off

Flexible work schedule

Professional development

Job summary

Placements24 is seeking a Lead Computational Biologist to drive advanced research initiatives in a fully remote, full-time role. You will guide a distributed team of bioinformaticians and data scientists, shaping strategies in genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics while collaborating with clinicians and biologists.

The position emphasizes leadership, PhD-level expertise, and strong programming skills in Python or R, with extensive omics data experience and cloud/HPC proficiency.

Qualifications

• PhD in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, CS, Statistics or related quantitative field.
• Minimum 7 years in computational biology or bioinformatics, with at least 2 years in leadership.
• Proficiency in Python or R and bioinformatics libraries.
• Extensive analysis of genomic/omics data including alignment, variant calling, DE analysis.
• Strong background in statistics and ML for biological data.
• Experience with HPC or cloud environments.
• Excellent remote communication and collaboration skills.
• Proven ability to lead projects and mentor junior teammates.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and execution of large-scale computational biology projects.
• Develop and maintain robust bioinformatics pipelines for omics data.
• Apply machine learning and statistical modeling to biological data.
• Collaborate with experimental biologists and clinicians to interpret results.
• Mentor and manage a team of computational biologists and data scientists.
• Stay updated on advances in computational biology and bioinformatics.
• Communicate findings clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ensure data integrity and reproducibility, following best practices.
• Contribute to grant writing and new research proposals.

Skills

Leadership

Python

R

Bioinformatics

HPC

Education

PhD in Computational Biology or related field

Tools

Git

Cloud platforms (AWS/GCP)

Bioinformatics libraries

Job description

Placements24 is seeking a Lead Computational Biologist to drive advanced research initiatives in a fully remote, full-time role. You will guide a distributed team of bioinformaticians and data scientists, shaping strategies in genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics while collaborating with clinicians and biologists.

The position emphasizes leadership, PhD-level expertise, and strong programming skills in Python or R, with extensive omics data experience and cloud/HPC proficiency.