[Hiring] Bioinformatics Engineer @Mind Moves

Role Description

Designing and building synthetic data generation pipelines that produce high-fidelity, statistically representative datasets modeled on sensitive, controlled-access data sources — without exposing real participant-level information. Your synthetic datasets will let cross-functional teams prototype, test, and red-team AI/agentic systems against realistic data conditions before those systems ever touch production, controlled-access repositories.

You’ll collaborate with the Principal Investigator/Technical Lead, Biomedical Privacy & Gateway Engineer, Red-Team/Adversarial Security Lead, Cybersecurity Engineer, and the broader Mind Moves project team — while working closely with institutional stakeholders and Data Access Committees at NIH. This role offers the chance to:

• Make a measurable impact on how safely AI systems handling sensitive genomic and health data can be developed and tested.
• Gain hands-on experience with privacy-preserving data generation for frontier AI/ML pipelines.
• Operate at the intersection of data engineering, privacy, and federal data governance in a creative, mission-driven environment.

The contract will include:

• Design and build synthetic data generation pipelines (statistical modeling, generative models, or agent-based simulation) that replicate the structure and statistical properties of controlled-access datasets.
• Generate realistic synthetic test/dev datasets (e.g., genomic sequence-style data modeled on dbGaP) to support prototyping, MVP development, and red-team testing without exposing real participant-level data.
• Apply and tune privacy-preserving techniques, including differential privacy noise injection, to bound re-identification and membership-inference risk.
• Validate synthetic data fidelity — statistical distribution matching, utility-preservation testing, and downstream model performance parity against real data benchmarks.
• Assess and document residual privacy risk (e.g., re-identification, linkage, membership inference) for each synthetic dataset release.
• Collaborate with the Red-Team/Adversarial Security Lead and Biomedical Privacy & Gateway Engineer to supply adversarial and edge-case synthetic scenarios for testing.
• Contribute methodology documentation and data provenance records for review by institutional Data Access Committees (DACs).
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams across federal agencies and supporting partners.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience building synthetic data generation pipelines using statistical modeling, generative models (e.g., GANs, VAEs, diffusion), or agent-based simulation.
• Experience engineering and transforming large-scale genomic formats (e.g., multi-sample VCFs, PLINK binary sets, Hail MatrixTables) alongside complex, longitudinal clinical and phenotypic data.
• Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL, with hands-on experience using synthetic data, privacy, and scientific libraries (e.g., Opacus, Diffprivlib, PyTorch, Hail, Polars, or Spark).
• Data engineering and ETL skills — pipeline design, schema modeling, API integration.
• Knowledge of AI/data governance frameworks such as NIST AI RMF and federal (NIH/HHS) compliance requirements preferred.
• Background or experience in biomedical, bioinformatics, or life sciences preferred.
• Experience taking synthetic data pipelines from proof of concept through to production-grade, reusable tooling.
• Strong communication skills; ability to document methodology and risk assessments for non-technical and institutional stakeholders.
• U.S. work authorization for 1099 contracting; Mind Moves cannot offer sponsorship for this contract.
• Must be eligible to obtain and maintain a federal public trust credential / government badge.

Requirements

• Compensation range: $100-130/hr
• Estimated contract duration: September - December
• Contract hours: 20-25 hours/week
• Work locale: Remote in the US (EST time zone preferred)

Timeline and Process

Proposals are accepted on a rolling basis until the position is filled. The contract bid process will include 3 interviews and the invitation to complete a technical exercise.

Please note: incomplete applications will not be considered.