Summary:
We are seeking an accomplished Associate Vice President (AVP) of Knowledge Informatics to lead our informatics and engineering teams in creating and maintaining our comprehensive genetic and somatic knowledge bases, developing best practices for tertiary data analysis, and driving innovation through various types of data. This role requires a visionary leader with deep expertise in genetics, knowledge management, data architecture, and software engineering, particularly in a clinical diagnostic setting.
You will work closely with cross-functional teams to architect, engineer, and curate our proprietary clinical insight knowledge base as a part of our core data value proposition, integrate this knowledge into our clinical diagnostics workflows, and explore commercialization opportunities of our knowledge bases.
Qualifications and Experience:
- Education:
- Master’s degree in Human Genetics, Biology, Informatics, or a Science/Engineering background with work experience in knowledge informatics; PhD’s degree preferred.
- Experience:
- 10+ years of professional experience in data curation, clinical informatics, information and knowledge management, with a minimum of 6+ years in a leadership or managerial role.
- Proven track record of leading the architecting and development of data, informatics, and knowledge repositories and software platforms.
- Extensive experience working cross-functionally with Product, Software Development, Bioinformatics, Clinical Informatics, Compliance/Legal, and other departments to achieve database and software development goals.
- Experience in the healthcare industry, developing data platforms, knowledge bases, and software solutions for physicians and patients, is highly desirable.
Technical Competencies:
- Expertise in developing scalable, structured and unstructured data models.
- Extensive knowledge in proprietary and publicly available knowledge bases and data analysis platforms for human genes, mutations, diseases, and treatment options.
- Experience in developing databases and software platforms for information indexing, retrieval, knowledge extraction, and knowledge management.
- Experience in developing data curation, data normalization, and data integration tools, workflows, and daily operational processes.
- Experience with Agile, Scrum, and other iterative development methodologies.
- Experience with CI/CD tools and test-driven development practices.
Duties and Responsibilities:
- Leadership:
- Lead, inspire, and mentor multiple scientific and engineering teams to achieve high levels of performance and innovation.
- Foster a collaborative, agile, and customer-focused culture to drive continuous improvement in development processes.
- Strategic Oversight:
- Develop and execute the knowledge informatics strategy that aligns with business goals, focusing on clinical diagnostics applications.
- Collaborate with Commercial and Business Development teams in data and knowledge commercialization efforts.
- Collaborate with stakeholders across the organization to ensure the roadmap addresses both short-term needs and long-term growth.
- Technical Expertise:
- Provide architectural direction on scalable, secure, and efficient applications designed for healthcare use.
- Lead teams in utilizing hosted and cloud-native software tools and services for data processing.
- Lead the design and implementation of data models and software frameworks to effectively store and process data, information, and clinical insights.
- Offer guidance on front-end and back-end software development best practices, ensuring that solutions are aligned with the latest trends in healthcare technology.
- Innovation and Best Practices:
- Drive the adoption of industry best practices such as Agile, DevOps, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) methodologies.
- Encourage experimentation with emerging technologies to enhance data and knowledge processing effectiveness and efficiency, and improve workflows for internal data analysis, interpretation, and clinical report writing in daily production clinical operations.
- Quality Assurance:
- Oversee the implementation of rigorous software quality standards, ensuring compliance with medical software regulations and other relevant certifications.
- Ensure that data and software solutions are built to be functional, reliable, secure, and scalable, while adhering to data privacy regulations such as HIPAA.
- Managerial Responsibilities:
- This position directly supervises a multi-disciplinary team potentially consisting of clinical informaticians, data engineers, software engineers, and data curators, etc.
- This position may also manage contracted onshore and offshore teams.
Definition of Success in The First Ninety Days of Employment:
- Serve as an effective subject-matter expert in developing and improving Baylor Genetics existing carrier variant database, rare disease diagnostics database, pharmacogenomics knowledge base, heme oncology evidence, etc.
- Conduct gap analysis of Baylor Genetics knowledge informatics, build a one-year gap closure action plan and a five-year improvement strategy, and gain department head and CEO’s approval.
- Develop a team structure with hiring plan toward the successful execution of the five-year strategy.
Physical Demands and Work Environment:
- Frequently required to sit.
- Frequently required to utilize hand and finger dexterity.
- Frequently required to talk or hear.
EEO Statement:
Baylor Genetics is proud to be an equal opportunity employer dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workforce. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity, veteran status, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, or any other status protected under applicable federal, state, or local law.
