Hi,
I am a new graduated master student in bioinformatics. First of all, let me introduce myself a little bit. My major was pre-med, basically, I took a lot of biology classes, like genetics, immunology, cancer, etc. I also had some internship experience in a big biopharma company as a bioinformatician, where I analyze different NGS data and report results to biologists. I am currently doing a 6 months internship at another biopharma company and the job responsibility is similar. I was mainly using R. During this pandemic, I took advantage of working from home and I improved my machine learning skills (deploy deep learning specifically), also advanced my OOP in python, and learning front-end web development skills.
So you know, I am preparing to apply for next year's jobs after this internship. I love to do bioinformatics analyst and answer biological questions, but I feel it is not enough for me.
Can you guide me a little bit about the bioinformatics engineer path? What skills I must be mastering? I would like to hear from experts like you guys if you know how the engineer roles are in the bioinformatics field? Especially, have you heard of building web apps for bioinformatics, or bioinformatics engineers usually are building pipelined and maintain the database, etc.? I am only focusing on Boston area.
Thank you so much for your advice and information.
Stay safe,
Ron
When you refer to
bioinformatics engineeringit sounds like you are thinking more aboutsoftware engineeringapplied for bioinformatics. My personal hunch is that there are few software engineers doing bioinformatics. Pay differential is probably too wide. Many bioinformatics developers who create open source software are probably focused on making a product that solves a problem rather than engineer it to be the best it can be.That said with your skills you should be able to apply for
bioinformatics engineerpositions, if that is what you are worried about.