The posting
ABOUT ASTERA
Astera is a private foundation on a mission to steer science and technology toward an abundant future for all. We believe the coming years will bring an era of unprecedented scientific and technological advancement as exponential progress in AI converges with central advances in other fields to dramatically accelerate innovation. This inflection point provides an unparalleled opportunity to fundamentally rethink the institutions, systems, and tools that drive scientific progress. We are searching for visionary leaders who are compelled by the challenge of driving transformative change in the way science is funded, conducted, and communicated. You can read more about our mission, vision, and programming at astera.org/vision http://astera.org/vision.
THE ROLE
We are hiring a Member of Technical Staff to build data products with Astera's Open Science team. You will work with the team to design data curation, data validation, data infrastructure, and the eventual data product. This is a frontline and highly cross-functional role. You will spend as much time with the data contributors as you do wrangling data and writing code. We want someone who has seen data efforts succeed and fail, who knows the landscape of repositories and metadata standards, and who can turn a raw data dump into something structured, validated and used for research. The ideal candidate brings expertise in technical program management, experience building data products, a collaborative spirit, and a commitment to open science https://astera.org/open-science-policy/.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Technical Program Management
- Serve as the main technical contact for data generators. Run onboarding, answer questions and unblock data submissions.
- Learn how different projects generate and store data, then propose the lowest-effort path to deliver complete metadata.
- Develop concrete use cases for each data product with researchers and AI developers: who will query it, what question they bring, and what result they need back. Use them to set priorities, test the product against real workflows, and show partners what their metadata makes possible.
- Support research teams in thinking through best practices for community adoption of their data.
Data Product Development
- Define what a complete, valid metadata record looks, working from existing standards when possible rather than inventing parallel ones.
- Write automated checks for metadata completeness and metadata validity.
- Report quality per data partner in a form they can act on: which fields are missing, which records fail, and what changed since the last ingest.
- Build ingestion, validation and indexing pipelines, from harvesting partner metadata to serving it through a search interface and API.
Collaboration and General Tasks
- Work closely with Astera’s small but growing data team to maintain comprehensive living documentation for data repository interactions, establish best practices for data release timing and methods, metadata tools and standards, and ensure compliance with open science principles and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data standards.
- Collaborate across the organization, especially with software engineers, to identify and address technical gaps in data infrastructure, ensuring researchers have the tools and support needed to manage their data effectively.
- Support the integration of research data with open science knowledge graphs and ensure compatibility with emerging AI and machine learning ecosystems that rely on high-quality scientific data.
- Effectively communicate updates, new initiatives, decision processes, and other items through presentations and written products.
- Navigate the balance between Astera's commitment to radically open science and the practical realities of responsible data sharing, developing thoughtful approaches for situations where research sensitivity, privacy requirements, safety considerations, or dual-use risks demand more nuanced data release strategies, and knowing when to escalate particularly challenging cases to leadership while maintaining the organization's open science mission.
QUALIFICATIONS
Required
- Bachelor's degree in a scientific field such as biology, chemistry, physics, math, computer science, data science, information science, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
- 5+ years working with scientific or research data in a technical role: data engineering, research software, data curation or lab informatics.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills with the ability to translate between technical data requirements and researcher needs.
- Experience with FAIR data practices in at least one scientific domain, applied to real data.
- A track record of getting data out of other people: working with researchers or partner teams who do not report to you, and getting them to deliver.
- High agency self-starter with the ability to work independently, identify opportunities for process improvement, and drive initiatives forward without constant oversight.
Preferred
- Domain background in materials science, chemistry, physics, or neuroscience.
- Experience operating a data catalog or search index.
- Contributions to open-source software or community data standards.
LOCATION
This role is in-person in Emeryville, CA.
COMPENSATION
The successful candidate will receive a competitive compensation package, commensurate with their experience.
- Benefits summary https://www.notion.so/Astera-Benefits-Summary-Residents-and-Temporary-Staff-30caa1d01f248091ab8be9eaed84f998
Astera Institute is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.
