Job Description

About the Department
The Department of Biological Sciences, within the College of
Sciences at NC State University, is dedicated to research and
teaching in a broad range of aspects of the biological sciences. The
Department has strong undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral
programs and substantial extramural support to develop and maintain
integrative research programs. Additionally, the Department partners
with other units across the University to enhance its mission to
conduct interdisciplinary research and training programs.

The Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD) is a publicly
available database that has been continuously funded by the National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences since 2001. The goal of
this database is to advance understanding about the role of
environmental exposures on human health. CTD development and
expansion is supported by a team of software developers and
PhD-level Biocurators who are housed within the Department of
Biological Sciences.
Essential Job Duties
The incumbent will be an expert in advanced technical solutions, using this expertise to implement advanced and highly complex software solutions with minimal supervision. The position will be
responsible for and/or assist in:

● Baseline CTD Software Engineering and Development.
● All aspects of the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database’s (CTD) Public Web Application (PWA), www.ctdbase.org, the public’s front-end internet portal into CTD curation, 3rd party data integration, inference generation and scoring, and visualization functionality.
● All aspects of the CTD Curation Application (CAPP), which is used by CTD scientists to curate toxicogenomic relationships from the literature, including planned integration of Exposure Science curation, and text mining functionality.
● Use and maintenance of the suite of CTD data load-related process, which on a monthly basis integrates CTD curation with 3rd party datasets, generates and scores inference datasets, and moves these datasets to our public database.
● All text mining-related processes, which rank the literature in terms of suitability for curation, identify key actors, and are planned for integration into the CAPP.
● Maintaining the PWA software architecture, which includes periodically upgrading the application to the latest versions of Tomcat, Apache, Java, and other 3rd party software on which the PWA is reliant, new hardware migration, and software re-engineering and refactorization.
● Designing the CTD database, and developing and implementing stored procedure-based functionality.
● Ensuring CTD integrates those state-of-the-art software engineering tools which will provide the most effective means of presenting our toxicogenomic relationships, including data integration, network analysis, and visualization.
● Implementing in the PWA chemical structure search-based functionality, subcellular disease mapping functionality, and enhanced exposure analysis capabilities.
● Working with our System and Database Administrators to monitor network traffic and query execution.
● CTD’s availability and performance, and ensuring that the PWA is not misused, maliciously or otherwise.
● Promote positive team relationships across CTD.

Technical Support
● Applying knowledge and skills to troubleshoot complicated problems and provide timely resolution.
● Researching and/or developing new technologies and keeping abreast of emerging technologies to evaluate feasibility for organizational needs.
● Providing guidance to other team members for more complex issues.
● Completing detailed analysis and solutions development, regression testing, performance testing, and quality assurance testing in an accurate and timely manner.
● Developing and maintaining technical documentation and communicating status in a timely manner to stakeholders.
● Performing and/or assisting with CTD data analysis and reporting.
● Assisting with manuscript analysis and development.
● Performing CTD data corrections and validations.
● Fostering relationships with 3rd parties who collaborate with CTD.
● Assisting with grant analysis and preparation.

Inclusiveness and diversity are critical to the success of the College of Sciences and the University. The selected candidate will be expected to foster an environment that is supportive and welcoming of all groups.
Other Responsibilities
Qualifications
Minimum Education and Experience
Master’s degree and at least three years of relevant experience; or Bachelor’s degree with at least five years of relevant experience; or an equivalent combination of education, training and relevant experience.
Other Required Qualifications
Demonstrates in-depth knowledge of programming and coding and integrating this
knowledge to achieving solutions for highly complicated problems. Investigates, researches, and implements new technologies in web design, production, and application development.

Experience with redesigning and re-engineering large-scale web-based legacy applications.

Proficiency in Jakarta EE-based web application development and large-scale Java-based back-end processing, preferably using most or all of the following technologies:
● JSP/Servlet Model View Controller Architecture
● JavaScript/AJAX
● Java
● SQL/JDBC
● PostgreSQL Database Management System
● PL/PgSQL
● ER Studio
● UNIX-based shell scripting
● Apache/Tomcat
● Linux
● Windows
● LDAP/Active Directory-based authentication
● Knowledge of biological software applications and bioinformatics