Remote Variant Curation Scientist Jobs in California

Phoenix Bioinformatics is looking for a remote Biological Data Curation Scientist to join our scientific data nonprofit organization. We are a dedicated team motivated by a mission to sustain the data infrastructure that powers global research in plant biology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology.

The Role

As a biocuration scientist, one of your tasks will be to distill knowledge from the primary literature into structured data that powers research worldwide. This is critical scientific work that doesn't require a lab. The role spans data, tools, and the research community. You'll be a plant biologist on a small, distributed team, working closely with the TAIR Director and science team to make TAIR more valuable. If you are obsessed with getting details right and tidy data makes you happy, this is the role for you.

Note on AI Tools

AI tools are part of how we work. We expect you to use AI tools judiciously and to use your scientific expertise to ensure that the output is correct.

Your Work

This is a varied role, and no week includes all of it. A typical mix:

• Literature curation: Use AI to assist in curating gene function, annotation, and metadata from primary literature into TAIR's data resources, applying controlled vocabularies and ontologies (e.g., GO).

• Dataset acquisition and integration: Identify, evaluate, and prioritize new datasets that would increase TAIR's value, and partner with our tech team to integrate them.

• Tool and feature integration: Help decide which new analysis and visualization tools are worth bringing into TAIR and integrate them.

• Validation and QA: Validate outputs of bioinformatics tools, pipelines, and data loads for biological correctness, including the outputs of AI-assisted workflows.

• Community engagement: Represent TAIR to the research community by answering user questions, attending conferences, and giving presentations and workshops.

• Collaborate: Work effectively across time zones in an asynchronous, distributed environment.

What We're Looking For

You don't need to check every box below. If you have a strong plant biology background and are excited by the work, we encourage you to apply.

• MS or PhD in plant biology, or related field. Early-career candidates (e.g., recent PhDs and postdocs) are strongly encouraged.

• A solid grounding in Arabidopsis biology and/or plant comparative genomics.

• Comfort with (or eagerness to learn) bioinformatics data, data analysis pipelines, and data curation.

• Passionate about high quality data and making data reusable.

• Familiarity with the FAIR data principles and the importance of data standardization.

• Some experience using AI tools (e.g., Claude, Gemini) to tackle tasks that would involve coding, and the judgment to check the output.

• Clear written and oral communication.

• Comfort working asynchronously and semi-independently.

• Must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship. This position requires working from a US-based location. We are unable to sponsor visas for this role.

Bonus Points

• Recent experience with experimental plant biology including wet lab/large scale data analysis.

• Experience with biological data curation of either your own or someone else’s data.

• Familiarity with TAIR, other plant databases, and other genomic data resources.

• Basic scripting comfort (Python, command line) as a data consumer.

• Familiarity with GitHub, JIRA or other software/project management applications.

About Us

Founded in 2013, Phoenix Bioinformatics develops business models to sustain the research infrastructure that academic researchers rely on worldwide. Our flagship plant biology database, TAIR (www.arabidopsis.org), serves thousands of researchers per month. We also maintain MorphoBank (www.morphobank.org), a collaborative web application for evolutionary research using morphological data matrices and images. We combine the experimentation of a startup, the passion of a nonprofit, and the stable benefits of a mature company.

Benefits Compensation

• Compensation: $35,000/year for this half-time role (equivalent to $70,000/year full time)

• 0.5 FTE, 20 hours/week, fully remote with flexible hours.

• Generous time off: 12 holidays, plus pro-rated 72 hrs vacation and 36 hrs sick leave per year. One personal day equivalent per pay period.

• Excellent health insurance coverage: 99% of employee premiums and 70% of dependent premiums covered for our base plan, with the flexibility to choose other providers.

• Retirement: 401K with a matching contribution up to 8% of salary.

More Information: www.phoenixbioinformatics.org