Bioinformatics Data Scientist

Bioinformatics Data Scientist

Xilio Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company discovering and developing tumor-activated immuno-oncology (I-O) therapies with the goal of significantly improving outcomes for people living with cancer without the systemic side effects of current I-O treatments. The company is using its proprietary platform to advance a pipeline of novel, tumor-activated clinical and preclinical I-O molecules that are designed to optimize the therapeutic index by localizing anti-tumor activity within the tumor microenvironment. Learn more by visiting and follow us on LinkedIn (Xilio Therapeutics, Inc.).

Summary:

The Bioinformatics Data Scientist will join the Translational Biomarker team, supporting Xilio's expanding immune-oncology pipeline across both discovery and clinical research initiatives. Reporting to the Director of Bioinformatics, this key role offers an exciting opportunity to apply cutting-edge bioinformatics and data science techniques to contribute to the development of novel cancer therapeutics. At Xilio, you'll work in a collaborative, science-driven environment where your analytical insights directly inform key research and development decisions. You'll interact regularly with discovery scientists, clinical researchers, and senior leadership in a flat organizational structure that values diverse perspectives. This position offers a structured growth path with dedicated mentorship. Initially, you will focus on running established pipelines, generating reports, and creating visualizations. As you develop in the role, you'll have opportunities to work more independently, design new analytical approaches, and drive more complex projects forward such as genomics data analyses, clinical data analyses, or perform machine learning to derive insights from our internal collections of clinical and pre-clinical data. Additional opportunities may include contributing to scientific publications, presenting at conferences, and developing expertise in immuno-oncology data science. This position offers a flexible work arrangement with a hybrid schedule at our Waltham, MA office.

Job Responsibilities:

• Process, analyze, and visualize diverse biological datasets (including clinical trial samples, discovery research data, and publicly available genomics datasets).
• Execute and adapt existing bioinformatics pipelines and develop new analytical approaches through custom code implementation.
• Prepare reports, presentations and communicate findings to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Collaborate with scientists, researchers, and other professionals to understand research questions, develop analytical strategies, and communicate findings (e.g., gene expression analysis, dimensionality reduction, biological entity ranking, sequence manipulation or similar).
• Apply machine learning approaches to integrate, summarize, and extract insights from our internal collections of clinical and pre-clinical data.

Skills, Qualifications, and Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in bioinformatics, computational biology, data science or related field with 2-3 years experience OR Master's degree with 0-1 year experience.
• Proficiency in at least one programming language (R or Python), with willingness to learn the other as both will be used (approximately 80% R and 20% Python).
• Basic knowledge of biostatistics (distributions, hypothesis testing, and commonly used tests) and machine learning concepts (problem formulation, data splitting, common algorithms, loss functions, regularization).
• Strong data visualization skills (primarily using R's ggplot2 library) and ability to effectively communicate technical findings to diverse audiences.
• Coursework in or knowledge of basic biology concepts (DNA, RNA, proteins, cells, cancer, antibodies).
• Formal bioinformatics coursework or training (e.g., gene expression analysis, genomics, sequence manipulation).
• Hands-on experience applying supervised ML techniques (professional experience, thesis, or capstone project).
• Experience with developer tools and environments including command line interfaces (Linux/Bash), version control systems (Git), and basic SQL knowledge; familiarity with cloud platforms (GCP/AWS) a plus.
• Familiarity with bioinformatics techniques relevant to immunotherapy, and basic knowledge of immunological pathways and markers.
• Learning agility and intellectual curiosity, with a strong willingness to acquire new technical skills and biological knowledge.
• Flexibility to work across different projects and initiatives.
• Strong team player with excellent collaboration skills and a commitment to writing clean, well-documented code that others can understand and build upon.
• Strong communication skills to bridge technical and clinical domains.

Equal Opportunity and Inclusion

Our human capital resources objectives include, as applicable, identifying, recruiting, retaining, incentivizing and developing our existing and additional employees. We are committed to equal opportunity and inclusion across all aspects of our organization, including in our recruitment, advancement and development practices. We conduct annual performance and development reviews for each of our employees to discuss the individual's strengths and development opportunities, career development goals and performance goals. We also regularly survey employees to assess employee engagement and satisfaction. In addition, each regular full-time employee is provided an allowance and time to attend appropriate job-related trainings and other professional development courses, seminars, meetings, and similar sessions. If you are an individual with a disability who requires an accommodation with the hiring process, please reach out to [click to reveal email address] [email protected] .

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