COMPUTATIONAL SCIENTIST ASSOCIATE

University of Alabama at Birmingham

The department of Radiation Oncology seeks a Computational Scientist Associate to support the development of computational tools and analytical pipelines that advance both clinical radiation oncology operations and translational cancer research.

General Responsibilities

• Participates in the problem assessment, analysis, and development of computational methods, pipelines or procedures; evaluates, selects, and applies appropriate methods to the specific research problems.
• Contributes to the analysis of complex data; participates in interpretation and reporting of results.
• Identifies relationships and trends or any factors that could affect the results of research.
• Oversees projects of moderate size, scope, and complexity.
• Implements programming and workflow management systems to scale processes and analysis across a variety of computational platforms, including High Performance Computing clusters. Performs debugging on existing or novel methods and tools, and creates documentation.
• Manages computational environments (virtual environments and containers).
• Contributes to technical proposal preparation and/or presentations.
  
  

Duties& Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and maintain software applications supporting radiation oncology clinical and research workflows.
• Develop and support tools for DICOM / DICOM-RT parsing, transformation, validation, and workflow automation.
• Build and maintain web applications and APIs for internal clinical/research users.
• Support clinical integration of software tools, including deployment, configuration, user support, and workflow troubleshooting.
• Collaborate with physicists, physicians, dosimetrists, therapists, and IT teams to define requirements and implement research solutions.
• Assist with software validation, QA, and documentation for pre-clinical use.
• Troubleshoot application issues across development, test, and production environments.
• Contribute to code reviews, technical documentation, and standardization of development practices.
• Support data extraction, reporting, and interoperability between radiation oncology systems and downstream tools.
• Participate in continuous improvement of automation workflows for efficiency, reliability, and scalability.
• Develop computational pipelines for analysis of genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and other high-throughput biological datasets.
• Support analysis of RNA sequencing, whole exome sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, and other multi-omics datasets generated in radiation oncology research laboratories.
• Assist investigators with statistical analysis, data visualization, and interpretation of high-dimensional biological datasets.
• Develop reproducible research pipelines using Python, R, and workflow management tools.
• Integrate molecular datasets with clinical radiation oncology data to support translational research studies.
• Support analysis of preclinical models, including cell line experiments, drug response studies, and patient-derived tumor models.
• Perform other duties as assigned
  
  

Preferred

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, medical physics, biomedical engineering, data science, or a related field.
• Relevant experience in software development, computational science, computational biology, biomedical data science, or clinical systems integration.
• Required experience with DICOM, preferably including DICOM-RT objects (e.g., RT Structure Set, RT Plan, RT Dose, images). Proficiency in C# and Python or R. Experience developing and supporting web applications and/or web APIs.
• Experience working in a team-based software development environment (e.g., version control, testing, issue tracking).
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work across technical and clinical stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience in radiation oncology software development or clinical workflow integration.
• Experience with Varian ARIA and/or Ethos (preferred).
• Familiarity with radiation oncology data standards and workflows (simulation, contouring, planning, treatment delivery, QA).
• Experience analyzing high-throughput biological datasets such as RNA sequencing, proteomics, or genomic data.
• Experience with R or Python data science ecosystems.
• Experience integrating clinical and molecular datasets.
• Experience building reproducible computational pipelines.
• Experience working with high-performance computing environments. Experience developing data visualization tools or dashboards for biomedical research.
• Experience with clinical integration in hospital/healthcare environments, including deployment and user support.
• Experience building REST APIs and modern web application backends/frontends.
• Experience with databases (e.g., SQL Server, PostgreSQL) and data modeling.
• Experience with containerization and deployment tools (e.g., Docker). Familiarity with HL7/FHIR and/or other healthcare interoperability standards (nice to have).
• Experience with software validation and documentation for clinical/research tools
  
  

Salary Range: $77,640-$126,170

Education

• Master's degree in a related field OR Bachelor’s degree in related field and two (2) years of related experience.
• Work experience may NOT substitute for education requirement
  
  

UAB is an Equal Employment/Equal Educational Opportunity Institution dedicated to providing equal opportunities and equal access to all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, ethnic or national origin, sex (including pregnancy), genetic information, age, disability, and veteran's status. As required by Title IX, UAB prohibits sex discrimination in any education program or activity that it operates. Individuals may report concerns or questions to UAB's Assistant Vice President and Senior Title IX Coordinator. The Title IX notice of nondiscrimination is located at uab.edu/titleix.

Primary Location

University

Job Category

Scientific Research

Organization

311750000 Radiation Oncology Chair Office

Employee Status

Regular

Shift

Day/1st Shift

Work Arrangement (final schedule to be determined by the department/hiring manager)

Onsite