Main differences between Bioinformatics Software Engineer and Bioinformatician

Question

[d]

I am studying to enter the bioinformatics industry. I am however a little confused about the differences between a Bioinformatics Software Developer (or software engineer) and a Bioinformatician (bioinformatic scientist). As I understand, a bioinformatics software developer will design, code, test, debug and share with the scientific community the tools (software) that are going to be used to perform scientific research. In the other hand, a Bioinformatician (bioinformatic scientist) will perform said scientific research and share them with the scientific community through articles, mainly. I am trying to get it correctly because I aim to find a job which it's main objective is to find rare diseases and medical treatments by studying and working on the dna, rna, sequencing the genome and studying it.

Which of the two job titles are closer to that description? Does this job title implies a PhD as well as working on a lab performing tests? Which of the two implies to study large scale healthcare data?

Could we eventually consider being a Bioinformatics Software developer when we have a BSc and a Bioinformatician (bioinformatic scientist) when we have a MSc or a PhD?

Thank you very much!

[rpolicastro]

It will vary to some extent based on the position being advertised, but in general a software engineer in industry builds and maintains the bioinformatics tools, pipelines, and computational infrastructure for a company, whereas a bioinformatics scientist tends to spend more time using tools to analyze and interpret data for biological meaning. From the description of your desired role you sound more interested in bioinformatics scientists positions (also advertised as computational biologist).

[d]

Thank you very much for your answer. It clears it up better, I imagined it was bioinformatics scientist (computational biologist). I am pursuing now a BSc in Data science with classes of biology and biostatistics. Do you think we could consider working as a Bioinformatics Software Engineer while studying the MSc (so after earning a BSc) and working as a Computational Biologist (bioinformatics scientist) after having earned the MSc (so while perhaps pursuing a PhD)? Or are they two completely different things?

Thank you again!

Answer 1

[Mensur Dlakic]

Based on job titles, I think your interpretation is correct. However, one should always look at the job description, because that is ultimately where the required and desired qualifications are spelled out. Sometimes a bioinformatician will also be expected to develop databases and code, and software developer may also be expected to implement the software and use it on biological datasets.

Generally speaking, both types of jobs will require a higher degree than BSc, but there may be exceptions. I would imagine that a very talented programmer could get a software developer job with BSc only, but not the bioinformatician. Either way, job description should have all that specified very clearly.