Lead Scientific Data Engineer

Join Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Joint Genome Institute in the San Francisco Bay Area on a hybrid schedule. This senior leadership role offers a salary range of USD 158,808 to 267,996 per year and a strong benefits package, including top-tier health and retirement options, a culture that values belonging, a Winter Holiday Shutdown, parental bonding leave, and pet insurance. The position focuses on providing technical leadership for core genomic data systems, data management, job orchestration, and platform integration to enable AI driven scientific discovery.

Benefits

• Exceptional health and retirement benefits, including pension or 401K style plans
• A culture where you’ll belong, with strong investment in our teams
• Winter Holiday Shutdown each year in addition to vacation and sick time
• Parental bonding leave for both mothers and fathers
• Pet insurance

Responsibilities

• Provide senior technical leadership for JGI’s core scientific data and compute platforms by developing roadmaps, data system architectures, and long-term strategy
• Lead the design and deployment of production automated systems, APIs, and workflows supporting genomic data movement, metadata management, job orchestration, data access, and large-scale scientific computing
• Improve reliability, scalability, observability, interoperability, and maintainability of shared production data systems while ensuring sustainable operations
• Collaborate with product managers, scientists, and users to drive cross-team technical alignment and integration decisions addressing complex challenges and shared priorities

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or a related field and a minimum of 12 years of professional experience with large-scale scientific data and compute infrastructures, or an equivalent combination of education and experience
• Proven experience leading the design, development, integration, and operation of production software and data systems supporting metadata management, workflow orchestration, data lifecycle operations, and broad user data access
• Advanced knowledge of data and software engineering fundamentals for data-intensive distributed systems, including system design, concurrency, performance, and testing
• Broad experience with databases and data storage technologies, including relational databases, object storage, and systems for managing structured, semi-structured, and large-scale data
• Experience with data engineering and event-driven technologies such as Airflow or Kafka
• Strong experience using AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor, including judgment in reviewing and validating generated software for production quality, security, and maintainability
• Proficiency in Python and experience with one or more additional programming languages
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to present complex technical information to diverse audiences
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence in interdisciplinary environments, aligning users, stakeholders, and engineering teams around shared requirements and implementation plans

Technologies

• Airflow
• Kafka
• Claude Code
• Codex
• Cursor
• Python
• WDL
• Nextflow

About JGI

The Joint Genome Institute (JGI) is a global leader in genome science, helping shape the future of biological discovery through advanced genomic capabilities, expert support, and large-scale, AI-ready data resources. As a DOE Office of Science user facility supported by the Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program, JGI advances BER’s mission to achieve a predictive understanding of complex biological, Earth, and environmental systems in support of the nation’s energy and infrastructure.