Staff Data Scientist, Science

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was founded by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg in 2015 to help solve some of society’s toughest challenges — from eradicating disease and improving education to addressing the needs of our local communities. Our mission is to build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone.

The Team

CZI supports the science and technology that will make it possible to help scientists cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century. While this may seem like an audacious goal, in the last 100 years, biomedical science has made tremendous strides in understanding biological systems, advancing human health, and treating disease. 

Achieving our mission will only be possible if scientists are able to better understand human biology. To that end, we have identified four grand challenges that will unlock the mysteries of the cell and how cells interact within systems — paving the way for new discoveries that will change medicine in the decades that follow:

Building an AI-based virtual cell model to predict and understand cellular behavior
Developing state-of-the-art imaging systems to observe living cells in action
Instrumenting tissues to better understand inflammation, a key driver of many diseases
Engineering and harnessing the immune system for early detection, prevention, and treatment of disease

CZI’s work in science includes grantmaking programs, open-source software development, and close collaboration with the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network. The CZ Biohub Network includes the San Francisco, Chicago, and New York Biohubs as well as the Chan Zuckerberg Imaging Institute. CZI also collaborates with institutional partners like the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural & Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University. Join us in accelerating science.

The Opportunity

As a Staff Data Scientist, you'll lead the creation of groundbreaking datasets that power our Virtual Cell model—a cutting-edge initiative to understand cellular function at the molecular level and predict responses to genetic or environmental changes. Working at the intersection of data science, biology, and AI, you'll define data needs, format standards, analysis approaches and quality metrics and build pipelines to ingest, transform, and validate data products for AI use.

Our Data Ecosystem:

At CZI, we are generating unprecedented scientific datasets that drive biological modeling innovation:

• Billions of standardized cells of single-cell transcriptomic data, with a focus on  measuring genetic and environmental perturbations
• 10s of thousands of donor-matched DNA & RNA samples
• PB-scale static and dynamic imaging datasets
• TB-scale mass spectrometry datasets
• Diverse, large multi-modal biological datasets that enable biological bridges across measurement types and facilitate multi-modal model training to define how cells act.

After model training, we make all data products available through public resources like CELLxGENE Discover and the CryoET Portal, used by tens of thousands of scientists monthly to advance understanding of genetic variants, disease risk, drug toxicities, and therapeutic discovery.

Your Impact
You'll collaborate with cross-functional teams to lead dataset definition, ingestion, transformation, and delivery for AI modeling. Success means delivering high-quality, usable datasets that directly address modeling challenges and accelerate scientific progress. Join us in building the data foundation that will transform our understanding of human biology and move us along the path to curing, preventing, and managing all disease.

What You'll Do

• Contribute the tools required for a robust data ecosystem: build data ingestion pipelines, define data formats, standards, and database schemas, write validation tools, QC metrics, and analysis pipelines.
• Collaborate with ML engineers, AI Researchers, and Data Engineers to iteratively evaluate, refine and grow datasets to maximize model performance. 
• Discover and define new data generation opportunities, and manage the delivery of those data products to our AI team.
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, UX designers, and other data scientists to publish valuable datasets as part of CZI's open data ecosystem.

What You'll Bring

• 10+ years of experience with large scale biological data types (imaging, sequencing, or mass spec).
• Demonstrated ability to deliver multiple large biological data products.
• Experience with big data: extraction, transport, loading, databases, standardization, validation, QC, and analysis.
• Experience with processing and orchestration pipelines, such as Argo Workflows, Databricks
• Strong fundamentals in statistical reasoning and machine learning.
• Experience with biological data analysis and QC best practices
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Enthusiasm to ramp up on technologies and learn new domains.
• Experience working in a multidisciplinary environment (engineering, product, AI Research).

Compensation

The Redwood City, CA base pay range for this role is $214,000.00 - $321,000.00. New hires are typically hired into the lower portion of the range, enabling employee growth in the range over time. Actual placement in range is based on job-related skills and experience, as evaluated throughout the interview process. 

Benefits for the Whole You 

We’re thankful to have an incredible team behind our work. To honor their commitment, we offer a wide range of benefits to support the people who make all we do possible. 

• CZI provides a generous employer match on employee 401(k) contributions to support planning for the future.
• Annual benefit for employees that can be used most meaningfully for them and their families, such as housing, student loan repayment, childcare, commuter costs, or other life needs.
• CZI Life of Service Gifts are awarded to employees to “live the mission” and support the causes closest to them.
• Paid time off to volunteer at an organization of your choice. 
• Funding for select family-forming benefits. 
• Relocation support for employees who need assistance moving to the Bay Area
• And more!

If you’re interested in a role but your previous experience doesn’t perfectly align with each qualification in the job description, we still encourage you to apply as you may be the perfect fit for this or another role.

Explore our work modes, benefits, and interview process at www.chanzuckerberg.com/careers.

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