Principal Research Scientist, Bioinformatics Engineering Group Lead

Job Description

Abb Vie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas – immunology, oncology, neuroscience, and eye care – and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about Abb Vie, please visit us at  Follow @abbvie on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, You Tube and Linked In.

Abb Vie’s Genomic Research Center (GRC) is a center of excellence for bioinformatics, functional genomics, and human genetics. The GRC works across all R&D including discovery and clinical development, supporting all of Abb Vie’s therapeutic areas and multiple areas such as process sciences, global epidemiology, search and evaluation, and corporate strategy.

We are seeking a talented and highly motivated individual to join our team as a Bioinformatics Engineering Group Lead. As a key member of the critical Bioinformatics Engineering (BE) team in the GRC, you will play a pivotal role in driving high throughput omics data generation and ensuring top‑notch quality control. With the opportunity to provide effective leadership, this position is based at Abb Vie's Lake County Illinois headquarters, offering an inspiring environment for your career advancement and personal growth.

• Lead the Bioinformatics Engineering Group, providing expert technical guidance, overseeing task delegation, conducting performance evaluations, and fostering career development for team members.
• Take ownership of individual contributions and projects, including project design, gathering requirements, developing code and systems, and ensuring comprehensive documentation.
• Address the NGS data production engineering needs of the GRC by managing data, developing pipelines, automating processes, and scaling operations.
• Serve as a crucial liaison between Abb Vie's research‑serving IT teams and GRC Genomic Technologies and Bioinformatics organizations, advocating for technical requirements relating to infrastructure development, and facilitating seamless collaboration.
• Collaborate with the Bioinformatics Engineering Leadership Team to shape and execute strategic plans, ensuring the continuous evolution and growth of the department to meet the demands of a fast‑paced and dynamic research environment.
• Stay up‑to‑date with the latest advancements in AI and leverage them to enhance our capabilities, while also providing the opportunity to foster innovation, exploration, and personal growth.

• BS with typically 14‑16+ years, MS with typically 12‑14+ years, or PhD with typically 6‑8+ years of relevant experience, and degree in Bioinformatics, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Proven experience in personnel leadership, with a track record of directly supervising a minimum of 2 employees.
• Extensive expertise in bioinformatics analysis of NGS data, including strong command of tools and algorithms for base calling, demultiplexing, quality control, and reporting. Preference will be given to candidates with experience in a CLIA environment.
• Exceptional knowledge of Illumina NGS data generation platforms, along with familiarity with Oxford Nanopore or other long‑read technologies.
• In‑depth understanding of genomics data formats, databases, and resources, such as NCBI, Ensembl, and UCSC Genome Browser.
• Demonstrated proficiency in Nextflow development and management, specifically in automating and scaling NGS and bioinformatics processes (e.g., base calling, QC, report generation). Preference for candidates with Nextflow Tower experience.
• Expertise in operating within both on‑prem and cloud Linux HPC environments, showcasing hands‑on experience across a range of AWS services (e.g., EC2, S3, Dynamo
  
  DB, RDS) and data lake technologies (e.g., Snowflake, Cloudera, Databricks).
• Mastery of Python and BASH programming languages, familiarity with the software development lifecycle, and experience applying common development patterns (e.g., microservices).
• Proven involvement in code reviews, either as a participant or a…