Data Scientist II

Axle is seeking a Data Scientist II to support the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the NIH in Rockville, MD, with a salary range of USD 130,000 to 145,000 per year.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain reproducible bioinformatics pipelines for diverse biomedical data types including genomic, transcriptomic, single-cell, spatial, proteomic, metagenomic, metabolomic, and clinical datasets; develop reusable transformation logic and curated datasets for analytics, dashboards, APIs, notebooks, and downstream research workflows.
• Collaborate on multi-omics analyses for NCI CBIIT labs, covering bulk RNA-seq workflows (quality control, differential expression, gene set enrichment analysis), single-cell RNA-seq (clustering, UMAP/t-SNE visualization, cell type annotation, DEG), and Digital Spatial Profiling tasks (annotation, QC, normalization, spatial deconvolution, volcano plots, heatmaps).
• Enable reliable data movement from source systems into analysis-ready formats; support ingestion, curation, metadata capture, source-to-target mapping, schema management, provenance tracking, and long-term maintainability of data products.
• Apply statistical methods and machine learning techniques to biomedical data, including hypothesis testing, regression, clustering, dimensionality reduction (PCA, UMAP, t-SNE), and classification; incorporate AI or LLM-based extraction where appropriate with clear validation and stakeholder communication.
• Develop and support researcher-facing applications and visualizations, including interactive dashboards (Shiny, Streamlit), notebooks, reports, and APIs to explore multi-omics and clinical data; assist with figure generation for QC, differential expression, pathway, and spatial analyses.
• Collaborate with data scientists, bioinformaticians, researchers, developers, and government stakeholders to translate scientific needs into technical specifications, data models, and reusable workflows that accelerate biomedical research.

Requirements

• Education and background: Bachelor's degree in Data Science, Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Biological Sciences, or a related field; advanced degree preferred, or equivalent experience. Demonstrated experience in data-intensive roles supporting biomedical research or scientific computing.
• Data science and bioinformatics expertise: Proficiency in Python and R for analysis, scripting, and visualization; hands-on experience with at least two omics data types such as bulk RNA-seq, scRNA-seq, spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, metagenomics, or GWAS.
• Analytical skills: Strong foundation in statistical modeling, dimensionality reduction, clustering, differential expression analysis, and pathway analysis; experience with structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data across relational and data lake environments.
• Collaboration and communication: Excellent problem-solving abilities with the ability to communicate across technical and non-technical audiences; capable of translating scientific needs into technical solutions and clearly articulating risks, assumptions, and limitations.
• Domain alignment: Genuine interest in biomedical and translational research; ability to quickly learn domain terminology and workflows, with awareness of data governance, privacy, and compliance requirements for clinical and research data.

Technologies

• Python, R, Shiny, Streamlit, Snowflake, Databricks, Galaxy, Terra, Nextflow, WDL, Snakemake, Singularity, CWL, Scanpy, Squidpy, SCIMAP, AnnData, Jupyter, Posit Connect, AWS, EC2, S3, Lambda, SLURM, SGE, NIH Biowulf

Benefits

• 100% Medical, Dental & Vision Coverage for Employees
• Paid Time Off and Paid Holidays
• 401K match up to 5%
• Educational Benefits for Career Growth
• Employee Referral Bonus
• Flexible Spending Accounts: Healthcare, Parking Reimbursement Account, Dependent Care Assistant Program, Transportation Reimbursement Account