Senior Research Officer; Computational Biology

An excellent opportunity is available for a Senior Research Officer (Computational Biology) to join the Snow Centre for Immune Health at Australia’s pre‑eminent biomedical research institute.

The Snow Centre for Immune Health (SCIH) has a global mission to improve the lives of people with immune diseases, using a new approach to immune health. The centre, co‑led by WEHI and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, brings together leading Australian and international researchers with a shared mission to transform how we research and treat the immune system. Our goal is to accelerate discoveries into the underlying features and markers of immune health, to identify disease causes early and target appropriate treatment.

The Centre has been established in partnership with the Snow Medical Research Foundation.

We are seeking a creative and highly skilled bioinformatician or computational biologist to spearhead the analysis of multi‑modal datasets, including transcriptomics, immunological assays, immunophenotyping, other omics and clinical data. Your work will evolve from bioinformatics and statistical analyses of multi‑modal patient cohort data to more sophisticated machine learning analyses. You will interrogate large, complex patient cohorts, directly contributing to our understanding of the mechanisms behind autoimmunity and immune deficiencies.

At SCIH, we are pioneering integrative approaches to build comprehensive, predictive models of the immune system; as such, this role offers a unique opportunity to translate deep computational discovery into clinical applications that tangibly improve the diagnosis and treatment of immune‑mediated diseases. The work will be highly collaborative and involve interaction with clinical and immunology researchers, mathematical modelers, bioinformaticians and research software engineers in the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Division at WEHI.

Essential Knowledge and Skills:

• A PhD in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Statistics, Computer Science or other quantitative discipline
• Ability to process and analyse large biological datasets, including transcriptomics and clinical data, using R and/or Python
• Familiarity with immunophenotyping using flow data would be highly regarded
• An excellent academic record and achievements
• Demonstrated ability and potential for excellence and productivity in research
• Excellent attention to detail, ensuring that data, methods and theories are accurate, of high‑quality and accessible to other researchers

Desirable Knowledge and

Skills:

• Experience working with bioinformatics tools and pipelines
• Knowledge of cell biology and/or immunology
• Familiarity with high‑performance computing

Personal Qualities:

• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including the ability to communicate with people across disciplines
• Excellent attention to detail, ensuring that data, methods and theories are accurate, of high‑quality and accessible to other researchers
• Self‑motivated and opportunistic
• Excellent time management

This position is for two years in a full‑time capacity. Salary is Research Employee Level B, depending on experience ($117,595 – $139,636). Up to 17% superannuation and very attractive salary packaging options are available.

General enquiries can be directed to Prof Tony Papenfuss - papenfuss.au

A position description is available here.

Please apply by uploading your CV, cover letter and a document addressing the key selection criteria in pdf format.

Thursday 5 February 2026