Scientific Application and Database Developer
The EPA Environmental Research and Business Support Program has an immediate opening for a Scientific Application and Database Developer with the Office of Research and Development at the EPA Research Triangle Park facility in Raleigh Durham, NC.
The Office of Research and Development at the EPA supports high-quality research to improve the scientific basis for decisions on national environmental issues and help EPA achieve its environmental goals. Research is conducted in a broad range of environmental areas by scientists in EPA laboratories and at universities across the country.
The National Center for Computational Toxicology (NCCT) is responsible for developing computational tools and solutions for improving environmental risk assessments and regulatory decisions pertaining to chemical safety and sustainability. The NCCT ToxCast and Tox21 projects are testing thousands of chemicals in a wide range of state-of-the-art high-throughput biological assays, with the goal of building computational models for predicting toxicity. Supporting this effort are various databases tracking massive amounts of information related to bioassay outputs, chemical structures and identifiers, and detailed tracking of the chemical samples undergoing testing and a suite of web applications make these data available to the public.
The selected candidate shall provide scientific application development and programming for NCCT’s dynamic chemical and biological database-driven applications. He/she will work with other members of NCCT’s software development team to create new applications as well as maintain existing code bases. The selected candidate will assist with application development as part of a multi-disciplinary research team and will be trained to support the development, programming, testing and maintenance of multiple applications requiring access to chemical and biology databases that provides a foundation for all of NCCT’s programs.
Application and Database Programming Responsibilities will include:
- Assisting with application development,
- Presenting at biweekly product review meetings,
- Creating new applications and scripts to interact with databases,
- Maintaining existing code and scripts that may or may not access databases,
- Creating reusable web components,
- Participating in Agile (Scrum) software development,
- Developing automated tests for application code,
- Participating in team code reviews, and
- Maintaining records of meetings, correspondence, and action documents, and maintain a system to track projects in progress.
Communications-related responsibilities will include:
- Participating as a member of a multi-disciplinary research team,
- Working with other members of the development team within specific project space,
- Interacting with EPA scientists, and
- Documenting code and database development efforts.
Selected candidate may be asked to present work performed as a poster at a scientific conference.
Location: This job will be located at EPA’s Research Triangle facility in Raleigh-Durham, NC.
Salary: Selected applicant will become a full-time temporary employee of ORAU and will receive an hourly wage of $28.56 for hours worked.
Hours: Full-time
Travel: Occasional overnight travel may be required.
Expected Start Date: The position is full time and expected to begin November 2018. The selected applicant will be a temporary employee of ORAU working as a contractor to EPA. The initial project is through May 14, 2019, followed by up to one (1) 12-month optional period.
Working Conditions:
The selected candidate will be supervised by a mentor who will provide day-to-day direction, as well as coach, advise, and counsel, and review his/her work. The mentor for this position will be a federal EPA employee.
Eligible applicants must:
- Be at least 18 years of age and
- Have earned at a minimum a Master of Science degree in bioinformatics, biology, chemistry, computational biology, computer science, information science, math, physics, statistics, or a closely related field of study from an accredited university or college within the last 24 months and
- Be a citizen of the United States of America or a Legal Permanent Resident.
EPA ORD employees, their spouses, and children are not eligible to participate in this program.
Required Knowledge, Skills, Work Experience, and Education
The applicant shall have:
- Demonstrated education and/or experience in a programming or scripting language,
- A working knowledge of web application development, and
- A working knowledge of relational databases.