Open Position

About ALSF and The Data Lab

Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation is one of the leading funders of pediatric cancer research in the US and Canada. Since its inception in 2005, ALSF has funded more than 1,000 projects at nearly 150 institutions across the United States and Canada.

The Childhood Cancer Data Lab, an initiative of Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, was founded in August 2017 with the mission of empowering pediatric cancer experts poised for the next big discovery with the knowledge, data, and tools to reach it. The Data Lab is a team of software developers, data scientists, designers, and community managers who are driven to build software systems, analytical workflows, and training programs in service of this mission. Members of the Data Lab simultaneously contribute to childhood cancer research and to the open science and open source software communities.

Position Overview, Duties and Responsibilities

Engineers at the Data Lab write code to develop Data Lab services and interfaces that meet the pressing needs of researchers studying childhood cancer. These developments will serve a community of dedicated scientists and clinicians, including those who receive grants from ALSF. Engineers work with computational biologists, designers, and the Director to guide conception, development, and maintenance of a variety of products and services ranging from primarily user-facing interfaces to computationally intensive processing of large collections of biomedical data. As part of our small team, you will have the opportunity to make an outsized impact on our products and services, as well as the community they serve. Working at the Data Lab also provides a unique opportunity to interact with the pediatric cancer research community and its supporters at ALSF.

As part of the Data Lab Engineering team, you will report to the Engineering Manager. You will help tackle a variety of technical challenges and turn them into reliable software implementations. You will have an opportunity to learn and develop your skills and expertise while building tools and applications that directly benefit childhood cancer researchers. Everyone at the Data Lab participates in planning and tracking work. All members of the Engineering team meet for biweekly sprint goal setting and are expected to author and propose issues for inclusion in sprints.

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Responsibilities:

●      Collaborate with team members to understand issues and determine and implement solutions

●      Develop and deploy software solutions for diverse problems to compute infrastructure

●      Write clean, maintainable source code

●      Collaborate and conduct code reviews to maintain and raise code quality

●      Participate in sprint goal setting and planning

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All employees of the Foundation undertake other duties as needed and special projects as assigned. All positions at ALSF require occasional non-traditional work hours including evenings and weekends.

Required Qualifications:

●      Expertise in Python

●      Expertise in JavaScript

●      Thorough understanding of REST APIs

●      2 or more years experience with AWS

●      Experience with Docker or Deploying Docker Containers

●      Eagerness to learn new technologies and frameworks

●      Strong communication skills, with the ability to write clearly for Engineering and non- Engineering team audiences

●     Excellent professional judgment, including a demonstrated ability to prioritize tasks while working independently

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Preferred Qualifications:

●      Experience building and maintaining web applications with a large codebase

●      Experience with Django Rest Framework, Elasticsearch, and Terraform

●      Experience with React in production environments

●      Experience with Agile development

●      Existing contributions to open source projects

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If you think any of the above fits your existing experience or you believe you can transition your skills from one technology to one listed, please apply!

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Location

The Data Lab is fully remote. All positions at Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation require travel to in-person organization-wide events. All employees at the Data Lab must be able to travel to the Philadelphia area on a quarterly basis and are required to be available for synchronous work during a set of core hours tied to the Eastern Time Zone. Preference will be given to applicants in the Greater Philadelphia area.

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Applying

If interested, please submit your resume and a cover letter describing your interest and why you are the right fit for the position to humanresources@alexslemonade.org.