Biosecurity Genomics Analyst

Biosecurity Genomics Analyst

About Perimeter

Perimeter builds for resilience in an era of accelerating biological risk. Our end-to-end biosecurity infrastructure platform spans detection, characterization, forecasting, and response — powered by frontier AI and deployed across airports, hospitals, wastewater systems, and critical infrastructure worldwide. Perimeter's infrastructure maps the biological landscape, transforming biological data into biointelligence, enabling decisive response as soon as a threat emerges.

https://www.perimeter.bio/

About The Role

We are looking for a curious, technically capable, and articulate analyst to serve as the critical link between automated bioinformatics pipelines and the decision-makers who act on genomic intelligence. In this role, you will ingest, interpret, and contextualize pathogen genomic surveillance data — transforming sequencing outputs into clear, timely, and actionable assessments for public health and national security stakeholders.

This is not a pure engineering role and it's not a traditional biology career path. If you studied biology or genomics but don't see yourself in pharma, academic grant cycles, or therapeutic development, this is something different: applied genomic work where your analysis directly informs public health and national security decisions. You'll pull outputs from production sequencing pipelines, run downstream analyses, identify signals of concern (novel variants, anomalies against baseline, lineage dynamics, resistance markers), and translate findings into reports customers can act on. You should be as comfortable wrangling a phylogenetic tree as briefing a program manager on what it means and energized by work that protects populations, not portfolios.

This position is designed for someone early in their career who wants to grow into a technical client-facing role, someone with strong analytical instincts, a genuine interest in biosecurity, and the communication skills to become a trusted voice with our clients over time.

Responsibilities

• Data Intake & Quality Assessment. Monitor and receive outputs from automated bioinformatics pipelines (e.g., consensus genomes, variant calls, lineage assignments, QC metrics). Triage incoming data for completeness, quality, and analytical readiness. Flag pipeline anomalies or QC failures and coordinate with wet lab and engineering teams to resolve issues.
• Genomic Analysis & Interpretation. Perform downstream analyses including consensus genome characterization, phylogenetic reconstruction, lineage tracking, and temporal/geospatial trend analysis. Identify epidemiologically or biosecurity-relevant signals such as emerging variants, unexpected clade expansions, novel evolutionary events, or antimicrobial resistance gene acquisition. Contextualize findings against current open source pathogen intelligence, published literature, and customer-defined priorities.
• Product Development & Reporting. Support authoring clear, concise analytic reports, situational assessments, and briefing materials tailored to diverse audiences — from public health epidemiologists to national security program officers. Develop and maintain recurring surveillance products (e.g., weekly genomic situation reports, dashboards, or alert notifications). Contribute to the design of data visualizations that make complex genomic data accessible to non-specialists.
• Customer Engagement & Growth. Participate in customer meetings, technical exchanges, and briefings alongside senior staff. Build familiarity with customer missions, priorities, and information needs. Over time, take increasing ownership of client relationships and become a primary point of contact for analytic deliverables.
• Training & Capacity Building. Drive the development and international deployment of bioinformatics training offerings, including hosting virtual, in-person and train-the-trainer capacity building sessions. Serve as the technical subject matter expert for these training programs, overseeing content development to uphold scientific excellence.
• Collaboration & Process Improvement. Work closely with bioinformatics engineers, software developers, R&D scientists, epidemiologists, and other subject matter experts to refine analytical workflows. Provide feedback to pipeline development teams on output formats, metadata needs, and analytic gaps. Contribute to internal knowledge bases, SOPs, and training materials.
• Enhance Organizational Presence. Enhance the organization's industry presence, authority, and thought leadership by actively contributing to scientific publications, presentations, and conference participation.

Minimum Qualifications

• B.S. or M.S. in bioinformatics, computational biology, genomics, microbiology, public health, or a closely related discipline
• Familiarity with core genomic analysis concepts: sequence alignment, variant calling, phylogenetics, and lineage classification
• Proficient in at least one programming/scripting language (Python or R preferred) for data manipulation, analysis, and visualization
• Comfort working in a Linux/command-line environment
• Familiarity with common bioinformatics tools and file formats (e.g., FASTQ, BAM/SAM, VCF, FASTA; tools such as Nextclade, Nextstrain, Pangolin, IQ-TREE, Minimap2, or similar)
• Strong written and verbal communication skills — you can explain a phylogenetic analysis to someone who has never seen a tree
• Attention to detail and an ability to work under deadlines in a fast-paced operational environment

Preferred Capabilities & Experience

• Experience with pathogen genomic surveillance data (SARS-CoV-2, influenza, antimicrobial-resistant organisms, or biothreat agents)
• Exposure to genomic epidemiology concepts and tools (e.g., Nextstrain)
• Exposure to population genomics concepts
• Experience with multiple sequencing technologies (Illumina, Oxford Nanopore) and associated data QC metrics
• Experience with data visualization tools or dashboards (e.g., Tableau, Plotly, R Shiny, Streamlit)
• Coursework, internship, or project experience in public health, biosecurity, or One Health
• Prior experience communicating technical content to non-technical audiences (presentations, reports, policy briefs)

You Should Apply If You...

• Are passionate about working on a mission that matters & has real global impact
• Are a self-starter who thrives in dynamic, fast-moving environments and gets energized by ambiguity rather than slowed down by it
• Want to be part of building something from the ground up — we're a small, scrappy team, and we're looking for people who are comfortable operating without a full playbook but are equally excited about helping us build the processes and foundations that will carry us forward as we grow