(Junior) Bioinformatics Research Assistant

The Department of Marine Microbiology and Biogeochemistry (MMB) at NIOZ is seeking an enthusiastic Research Assistant with a background in bioinformatics, computational biology, scientific computing, software development, data science or related fields.

ROYAL NIOZ

NWO-NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research is the Dutch national oceanographic institute. The mission of NIOZ is to perform academically excellent multidisciplinary fundamental and frontier-applied marine research addressing important scientific and societal questions pertinent to the functioning of oceans and seas. NIOZ also serves as national marine research facilitator (NMF) for The Netherlands scientific community, and stimulates and supports national and international marine research, marine education programs and marine policy development.

THE DEPARTEMENT
The MMB Department investigates microbial communities across all marine environments, from estuaries to the deep ocean and from the geological past to the present. Through field and experimental studies combined with analytical, biochemical, and modern genomic techniques, the department examines the diversity, evolution, physiology, and activity of eukaryotes, prokaryotes, and viruses in diverse marine settings.

THE VACANCY

Are you an enthusiastic team player versed in bioinformatics, computational biology, scientific computing and data science? Do you enjoy setting up new workflows and computational pipelines? Apply now to become one of the Bioinformatics Research Assistants in the department and contribute your expertise to support research projects, develop bioinformatic pipelines and maintain infrastructure such as shared databases.

Job requirements

THE IDEAL CANDIDATE

The ideal candidate has strong quantitative skills in second and third generation sequence data analysis, general bioinformatics data analysis, statistics, scripting languages (Python, R or bash), familiarity with Linux environments, and high-performance computing (ideally SLURM). Good command of a programming language like Java or C/C++ are a plus, as well as experience with pipeline development with Snakemake or NextFlow. Interdisciplinary communication and thorough documentation skills are fundamental.

Due to the international character of the institute and department, the position requires very good communication skills in English, Dutch is a plus. This position is open to MBO/HBO/BSc level candidates.

Key responsibilities

• Perform molecular data analysis using in-house data analysis pipelines (e.g. for genomic, metagenomic, amplicon, transcriptomic and metatranscriptomic data analysis) generated from (primarily environmental) microbial samples.

• Develop new in-house pipelines and actively maintain and update existing computational pipelines.

• Assist users with data handling for bioinformatic applications and accessing computational facilities at NIOZ.

• Support bioinformatic research projects with custom bioinformatic analyses, mainly high throughput sequence data processing.

• Produce detailed and complete documentation of your work.

• Troubleshoot problems and answer computational/bioinformatic questions from users.

• Providing and maintaining bioinformatics infrastructure for the community at NIOZ such as commonly used databases and documentation of our infrastructure.

We expect

• Positive attitude, open mind, proactive, and willingness to take on new challenges.

• Precise and organized working manner.

• Working efficiently on your own and as part of a team.

• Comfortable in an international and interdisciplinary environment.

We offer

• A professional, innovative and diverse working environment with many opportunities to contribute to top-level marine research.

• Interactions with researchers with backgrounds from a broad range of environmental microbiological and other fields.

• Space and freedom to creatively develop new computational pipelines and workflows for the benefit of the department and the whole NIOZ.

• Excellent computing facilities.

• Support from an enthusiastic team of molecular analysts, bioinformaticians and computational infrastructure personnel to work with you.

• Flexible working hours and the possibility of partially working from home.

NIOZ is a transparent institute with a healthy working climate and an inclusive culture, where people from diverse backgrounds and genders bring their talents and further develop these talents. We aim for inclusive decision-making processes and expect our leadership to show visible commitment, awareness of bias, and cultural intelligence.

 CONDITIONS

• We offer a permanent work contract for a full-time position after an evaluation period of one year.

• Salary compliant with CAO-WVOI (Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Research Institutes) scale 8/9, scaling based on level of experience.

• The freedom to fulfil your role and opportunities for your personal (talent) development with the help of the NIOZ Academy. 

• 338 annualized holiday hours for a full-time 40-hour work week. 

• Pension scheme via ABP, 8% holiday allowance and a year-end bonus of 8.33%. 

• 2nd class public transportation travel is reimbursed 100%. 

• Employment benefits plan to exchange a portion of your salary for days off or vice versa or can be used to purchase a bicycle with tax benefits. 

Please note that non-EU citizens can only apply for this position when they have a valid work permit for working in the Netherlands as it is not regarded as a scientific position.

 MORE INFORMATION

For additional information about this vacancy, please contact Julia.Engelmann@nioz.nl. For additional information about the procedure, please send an e-mail to working@nioz.nl.

The closing date for this vacancy is December 15, 2025.