Arcadia Science Careers

A Bit About Us:

We are Arcadia Science. Arcadia is a science company founded and led by scientists. Our mission is to transform evolutionary innovations into real-world solutions by openly developing more efficient, replicable, and sustainable ways to leverage the biology of diverse organisms.

Publishing at Arcadia:

We’re experimenting with new ways of sharing science, hoping to maximize speed, utility, and rigor in publishing. We share research in the form of modular “pubs” on our own platform (powered by PubPub), without journals. The Publishing Team supports our scientists in adopting and pushing the boundaries of this new approach. Now that we’ve established a robust internal process for this, we’ve identified key ways to improve and we’re expanding the team. 

The Opportunity:

We need someone who can decide the best way to share large, complicated data sets and has the technical chops to do it. Static images and text can only go so far in expressing multi-layered, sophisticated data. We’re hunting for a Data Visualization Designer who can work with our scientists to understand their data, drill down on what’s important, and shape it all into a form that others can easily interact with to get the info they want.

The ideal candidate will apply their modern, graceful design sense to plan and generate both static and interactive figures. You should bring experience working with a wide range of data types, preferably some related to the life sciences. With information design know-how and creativity, you will make our data as useful as possible.

Responsibilities:

• Deciding how best to visualize complex data based on discussions with scientists and the Publishing Team.
• Creating static figures based on large underlying data sets.
• Developing custom interactive visualizations (we’re experimenting with Plotly right now but would love more control and elegance).
• Maintaining a consistent house style across all outputs and establishing standards for new visualization types.
• When possible, developing templates, sharing code, and building documentation so that our scientists can learn to make visualizations, especially interactives, on their own.

• 3+ years of experience creating interactives and/or visualizing rich data sets.
• Data science training and/or domain expertise preferred.
• Experience with programming languages like JavaScript, Python, R, HTML, and/or other tools.
• Experience working with biological data is strongly preferred, especially using biological visualization tooling within the React/JS system.
• Experience working directly with scientists is preferred. Experience working with people who have a wide range of expertise.
• Experience leading data visualization projects with multiple stakeholders, from start to finish.
• Experience in front-end web design and development is a plus.

Interested applicants should submit a cover letter, resume, and personal website link and/or design portfolio. Note that we’ve also posted a listing for a Science Illustrator. Please read that posting carefully to make sure you find the right fit. If you feel that you really have the skill set for both positions, please apply to one but make a note in your cover letter that you’d like to be considered for either.

The expected salary range is $115,000–$150,000 per year with generous equity and benefits, depending on experience level. The Data Visualization Designer is part of the Publishing team and reports to the Director of Publishing. The position will require the individual to be on-site at our Berkeley, California headquarters. 

Arcadia Science is an equal opportunity workplace; we welcome people from all backgrounds and communities. We provide competitive compensation and practical benefits to keep you happy and healthy so that you can do your best work. Please note that an offer of employment from Arcadia is contingent upon the successful clearance of a reference and background check.

A Bit About Us:

We are Arcadia Science. Arcadia is a science company founded and led by scientists. Our mission is to transform evolutionary innovations into real-world solutions by openly developing more efficient, replicable, and sustainable ways to leverage the biology of diverse organisms. 

The Opportunity:

Building a strong and creative data science team is critical to our success. Arcadia’s ambitious research goals require strategic integration of software engineering, computational biology, and machine learning tools across all aspects of our science. We are seeking experienced, impact-oriented Software Engineers to join our growing team. Our ideal candidate for this role has strong computational skills, experience working in a fast-paced environment, and has a natural engineering mindset. We are looking for excellent builders and problem solvers.  Top candidates will have fluency in multiple coding languages (e.g. R, bash, Python), and will easily adapt to conducting analyses on different computational infrastructures such as AWS cloud computing. Given our goal of making our tools as open as possible while respecting the licenses of the underlying software and our translational goals, open source software experience is a big plus. You can learn more about our approach to computing at Arcadia here and check our existing projects on GitHub.

Open Search:

Note that this is an open search. For open searches, we provide a guiding framework below on general skills and expertise we need at Arcadia. We encourage candidates to be forthcoming about strengths and career goals. This search does not have a rigid timeline, so our response times may vary. Candidates should let us know of any relevant timing constraints on their end.

Responsibilities:

• Work alongside computational biologists, researchers and engineers to bring our latest computational tools into production as reusable software.
• Build proof-of-concept tools or pipelines to test and validate hypotheses.
• Design technical architecture specs for new computational methods and software based on the needs of stakeholders.
• Leverage computational biology, machine learning, and bioinformatics skills to both spur and implement research projects.
• Provide data, digital, and analytical support to discovery and early development projects

• BA/BS in computer science, engineering, bioinformatics, mathematics, or a related field
• Extensive experience (4+ years) in building production-level backend systems (ie running large scale ETL jobs or processing massively parallelized workloads using AWS Batch)
• Expertise in at least one programming language (Python or R preferred), with a willingness to adapt and learn new languages as needed
• Experience with environment management or containerization tools (Conda, Docker etc.)
• Experience developing complex multi-language pipelines using a workflow orchestration framework (Nextflow, Snakemake etc.)
• Interest in understanding of evolutionary and molecular biology (direct experience not required)
• Track record of taking new projects from idea to high quality technical products 
• Hands-on experience working with complex and large datasets
• Experience with open-source software and contributing to open-source projects
• Experience with software engineering practices (using version control, CI/CD pipelines etc.)
• Is highly adaptable and able to start and stop various projects as well as pivot with the organization as it grows
• Ability to move fast in an environment where things are sometimes loosely defined

Interested applicants should send a resume and GitHub or personal website link. Cover letter is optional. You will be asked to answer the following question as part of your application: “What is your proudest technical achievement (i.e. a product that you shipped or a project you delivered on)? Please provide technical details on the project and your impact.” (in max 300 words)

The expected salary range is $150,000-$225,000 per year with generous equity and benefits, depending on experience level.  

The position will require the individual to be on-site at our Berkeley, California headquarters.  

Arcadia Science is an equal opportunity workplace; we welcome people from all backgrounds and communities. We provide competitive compensation and practical benefits to keep you happy and healthy so that you can do your best work. Please note that an offer of employment from Arcadia is contingent upon the successful clearance of a reference and background check.

A Bit About Us:

We are Arcadia Science. Arcadia is a science company founded and led by scientists. Our mission is to transform evolutionary innovations into real-world solutions by openly developing more efficient, replicable, and sustainable ways to leverage the biology of diverse organisms.

The Opportunity:

We are seeking an extraordinary and experienced Director of Data Science to join our team to lead the expansion of data science at Arcadia. Our ideal candidate is a strong manager and proven leader of fast-paced growing organizations with a demonstrable bias toward taking action. We are looking for someone who can think deeply about how best to integrate software engineering/ML and life science research to move towards more efficient and predictive modes in biology. We prefer candidates who have an understanding of how to leverage an evolutionary framework to identify interesting trends across biology and approach this with an engineering mindset. We are also looking for a highly motivated and collaborative systems thinker who understands how to scale a team and a computational discipline.   This person will help us develop structures and processes as we scale to an organization of approximately 150 people over the next five years. While you are able to lead a team on a project and delegate work effectively, you are not above rolling up your sleeves to do the hard work yourself as we build. You will quickly gather information and apply your keen eye for detail to help prioritize needs and make critical decisions. You should be a strong communicator, as you will be leading discussions with a wide range of stakeholders across the organization. Top candidates will have extensive experience building data science teams within a scientific research environment. Additionally, top candidates will have fluency in multiple coding languages (e.g. R, bash, Python), and will easily adapt to conducting analyses on different computational infrastructures such as AWS cloud computing. Given our goal of making our tools as open as possible while respecting the licenses of the underlying software and our translational goals, open source software experience is a big plus. You can learn more about our approach to computing at Arcadia here and check our existing projects on GitHub.

Responsibilities

• Hire and manage a team of data scientists to create digital solutions that package algorithms, data science workflows, and data assets into user-friendly experiences for our R&D teams.
• Build proof of concept tools or pipelines and mock-up visualizations to test and validate hypotheses.
• Innovate algorithms, methods, and workflows, and translate them into reusable software.
• Define requirements for new computational methods and software based on the needs of stakeholders.
• Leverage computational biology, machine learning, and bioinformatics skills to both spur and implement research projects.
• Evaluate commercial and open source tools, incorporating them into our software strategy.
• Collaborate with scientific project teams to design research directions.
• Provide data, digital, and analytical support to discovery and early development projects to inform the data, digital, and analytical roadmap for R&D.
• Mentor employees to ensure team and divisional objectives are on-track or accelerated.

• BA/BS in computer science, engineering, bioinformatics, mathematics, or a related field.
• General understanding of evolutionary and molecular biology.
• Track record of building high performing teams of software engineers, data scientists and computational biologists.
• Hands-on experience working with complex, biological datasets.
• Expertise in at least one programming language, with a willingness to adapt and learn new languages as needed.
• Experience in developing digital experiences that impact data analysis, such as workflow automation (Nextflow, Snakemake), data visualization, and API development.
• Experience with open-source software and contributing to open-source projects.
• Experience with software engineering practices (using version control, CI/CD pipelines etc.).
• Experience with using and training ML models.
• Previous startup experience.

• A brief narrative of your professional background, highlighting accomplishments in building data science teams.
• A description of how you would approach data science in a growing scientific startup.

The expected salary range is $250,000-$350,000 per year with generous equity and benefits, depending on experience level.  

The Director of Data Science will inherit a small team and reports to the CEO. The position will require the individual to be on-site at our Berkeley, California headquarters. 

Arcadia Science is an equal opportunity workplace; we welcome people from all backgrounds and communities. We provide competitive compensation and practical benefits to keep you happy and healthy so that you can do your best work. Please note that an offer of employment from Arcadia is contingent upon the successful clearance of a reference and background check.