Forum:Field of work for software engineer in bioinformatics

Question

[andres.arrieche.7]

Hello! It's my first time here. I'm software engineer focused in problem solving and algorithms. I love programming contests. Some months ago I heard about bioinformatic, I took 2 basic courses in coursera and I liked a lot the kind of programming problems I found there. I'm considering to study a master in bioinformatic, the main reasons are a personal challenge, fun and improve my problem solving skills, but I would like to know which jobs a "bioinformatic master" can apply? where can work? I have looked for jobs offers for bioinformatic but I have found almost nothing. I want to get information about jobs, responsibilities and challenges for a bioinformatic master(with a background in software not biology). Hope my question follow this site's rules. Thanks in advance.

[iraun]

Just to have a general idea about the kind of bioinformatic jobs, main responsabilities, tasks, necessary skills and so on, I'd recommend you to take a look to the job offers published in this page, under "JOBS" section. Maybe it could help you to get introduced to bioinformatics huge world. :)

[Daniel]

Here: https://www.biostars.org/t/Jobs/

Answer 1

[DG]

The biggest recommendation I have for people from a non-biology background who want to get into bioinformatics is, if possible, to take some biology courses. Especially intro molecular biology, genetics, etc. Knowing how the biology works is important, because it is a fuzzier area, with lots of exceptions to the "rules" of how things work. It can save you a lot of pain in terms of making too many assumptions in code down the road.

The job situation will vary a lot based on location. For individuals with Master's you would mostly be looking at industry, core facilities (sequencing centres, bioinformatics cores at universities, etc), and positions like that. Lots of pharmaceutical companies have small in house bioinformatics groups, and there is an ever increasing number of cloud-based genomics and bioinformatics as a service startups.