Data Steward - Sequencing & Phenotyping

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.

You will be a bridge between research, data and the CropXR data infrastructure. Your work includes:

• 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.

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.

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.

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…