Senior Technical Applications Specialist (Northeast Region)

Job Description

We are looking for a Senior Technical Applications Scientist, Bioinformatics located in the Northeast Region (NY, NJ, CT, MA) to join our group supporting Technical Services across the Americas (AMR). This senior, customer-facing bioinformatics role combines hands-on troubleshooting with technical expertise in bioinformatics workflows for long-read genomic data. You will handle blocking issues for the broader Technical Applications and Field Bioinformatics teams. You will also manage bioinformatics support and onboarding for strategic accounts and help standardize bioinformatics support for customers within AMR.

This role is about speed, transparency, and orchestration rather than deep custom analysis on every case. You will spend less time solving every problem yourself and more time prioritizing effectively, mentoring junior team members, and building the playbooks, documentation, and processes that let the whole team resolve issues faster. This will be a remote role based in the region with occasional travel (10-20%).

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the first point of contact for bioinformatics support for key accounts, prioritizing questions across data QC, base-calling, alignment, workflow use, and basic interpretation.
• Provide rapid, practical solutions using validated workflows and SOPs, while identifying issues that require escalation.
• Lead bioinformatics onboarding for strategic customers, service providers, and channel partners, including application-specific workflow training, tool selection, and guidance through the data generation-to-analysis pipeline.
• Act as the bridge between customers, field teams, product support, and R&D by structuring escalation details, translating problems into actionable tickets, and communicating resolution clearly.
• Support field teams with first-line troubleshooting for strategic accounts, including workflow failures, unexpected sequencing outputs, tool misconfigurations, and customer site visits when needed.
• Identify recurring issues and trends to improve documentation, knowledge base content, training materials, workflows, and product feedback.
• Standardize bioinformatics support across AMR and global teams, enabling consistent guidance, stronger customer self-service, and faster issue resolution.
• Mentor and onboard junior team members and provide bioinformatics guidance to the broader Technical Services organization.

What We Expect From You

• Located in the Northeast Region (NY, NJ, CT, MA)
• A Ph.D., or equivalent experience, in a relevant field such as Bioinformatics, Microbiology, Genomics, Molecular Biology, or a related life science discipline
• Demonstrated experience with Oxford Nanopore or other NGS bioinformatics workflows (preferably long-read sequencing), including basecalling, alignment, and variant or marker calling
• Proficiency with data analysis and visualization using both GUI tools and the command line; comfort working in Linux/Unix/Windows environments and with common bioinformatics tools
• Prior experience using cloud-based compute (AWS, GCP, Azure) is a plus
• Prior experience in a customer-facing, technical support, or field applications role within life sciences, ideally including escalation management or case ownership
• Proven experience translating complex technical issues into clear, actionable guidance for both customers and internal teams
• Experience creating documentation, SOPs, or training materials that scale support
• Experience mentoring, onboarding, or providing technical guidance to junior colleagues
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose root causes across sequencing, basecalling, and pipeline issues while managing multiple concurrent cases
• Written and verbal communication skills sufficient to translate technical findings for both scientists and non-technical stakeholders, and to produce clear escalation tickets and customer-facing documentation
• Ability to work independently while contributing to a broader, globally distributed technical services team
• Willingness to travel within territory (~10–20%), with some national/international travel as needed

About Us

Oxford Nanopore has developed a new generation of nanopore-based sensing technology for faster, information-rich, accessible and affordable molecular analysis. The technology is used to understand and characterise the biology of humans, animals, plants, bacteria, viruses, and diseases such as cancer. By enabling biological insights, we strive to improve life on Earth and beyond.

The salary for this role is between $97,479 and $121,849 USD. The salary offered will reflect the skills and experience of the candidate. Certain roles within ONT are eligible for annual bonus and stock. These awards are allocated based on individual performance. Employees based in the US have the option to choose healthcare benefits, participate in the company 401(k) plan and company match, we also offer short-term and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, and commuter benefits to name a few.

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. Please note that no terminology in this advert is intended to discriminate on the grounds of a person's gender, marital status, race, religion, colour, age, disability or sexual orientation. Every candidate will be assessed only in accordance with their merits, qualifications and abilities to perform the duties of the job. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. If you require an accommodation to complete the application or interview process, please contact [email protected]

About Us

Oxford Nanopore Technologies: Our goal is to bring the widest benefits to society through enabling the analysis of anything, by anyone, anywhere. The company has developed a new generation of nanopore-based sensing technology for faster, information rich, accessible and affordable molecular analysis. The first application is DNA/RNA sequencing, and the technology is in development for the analysis of other types of molecules including proteins. The technology is used to understand and characterise the biology of humans and diseases such as cancer, plants, animals, bacteria, viruses, and whole environments. With a thriving culture of ambition and strong innovation goals, Oxford Nanopore is a UK headquartered company with global operations and customers in more than 125 countries.