Data Steward - Sequencing & Phenotyping

TU Delft & CropXR are looking for a Data Steward with a strong affinity for plant research, sequencing and phenotyping data. You will work closely with researchers to make sure that valuable research data is well organised, understandable, findable and reusable.

Data Steward - Sequencing & Phenotyping

Job description

Your responsibilities

You will be a bridge between research, data and the CropXR data infrastructure. Your work includes:

• Supporting researchers with data management throughout the research lifecycle, from experiment design and data collection to publication and long-term reuse.
• Working with sequencing and phenotyping data, including sample and plant-material information, experimental metadata, sensor and imaging data, and files such as FASTQ, BAM and VCF.
• Helping researchers describe experiments and datasets using consistent metadata and relevant standards, including MIAPPE, ISA and the CropXR Metadata Management Procedure.
• Making research data more FAIR by establishing practical conventions for file organisation, naming, identifiers, metadata, versioning and documentation.
• Reviewing datasets with researchers, identifying missing information, and advising on suitable formats, repositories, access conditions and data publication, including submissions to repositories such as ENA or NCBI.
• Preparing and connecting datasets for the CropXR Resilience Hub and contributing to CropXR-wide data-management guidelines and best practices.

Your approach

You combine scientific curiosity with a pragmatic, service-oriented mindset. You enjoy talking to researchers about their experiments, asking the questions that uncover missing context, and translating FAIR data principles into practical actions.

You are comfortable working across disciplines and can communicate with experimental scientists, bioinformaticians, data scientists and infrastructure developers.

Success means that good data management becomes a natural part of the CropXR research workflow: datasets are well described, can move smoothly into analysis and repositories, and remain understandable and reusable by other researchers.

Job requirements

You have a completed university degree at MSc level, or an equivalent level of academic training, in a relevant field such as plant sciences, biology, bioinformatics, biotechnology, genetics, computational biology, data science or a related discipline. You have a good understanding of how biological research data is generated and used. You do not need to develop sequencing pipelines or phenotyping platforms yourself, but you should understand sequencing and phenotyping data well enough to communicate effectively with both researchers and technical teams.

You are comfortable with metadata, FAIR data principles and research data repositories. Experience with relevant standards and data-management approaches is an advantage, but a willingness and ability to learn is more important. Some familiarity with structured data or scripting — for example Python, R, command-line tools, JSON, CSV or APIs — is useful for understanding and validating datasets. This is not primarily a software-development role. You communicate clearly in English and are comfortable working in a collaborative, interdisciplinary research environment.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)

Delft University of Technology is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society.

Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) brings together three scientific disciplines. We educate innovative engineers and have excellent labs and facilities that underline our strong international position. In total, more than 1000 employees and 4,000 students work and study in this innovative environment.

CropXR

CropXR was launched in 2023 to help make agricultural production less vulnerable to climate change and less dependent on artificial fertilisers and chemical pesticides. It is a collaboration between the universities of Amsterdam, Delft, Wageningen and Utrecht, together with partners from the plant-breeding sector. CropXR brings together plant sciences, computational and data sciences, social sciences and industry to develop more resilient crops and contribute to sustainable agriculture.

Conditions of employment

• Duration of contract is 2 years. Temporary.
• A job of 38-40 hours per week.
• A salary based on Scale 10 of the CAO for Dutch Universities with a salary between €3706 - €5760 gross per month based on a fulltime contract (38 hours), plus 8% holiday allowance and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%.
• An excellent pension scheme via the ABP.
• The possibility to compile an individual employment package every year.
• Discount with health insurers on supplemental packages.
• Flexible working week.
• Every year, 232 leave hours (at 38 hours). You can also sell or buy additional leave hours via the individual choice budget.
• Plenty of opportunities for education, training and courses.
• Partially paid parental leave.
• Attention for working healthy and energetically with the vitality program.
• FTE: 1.

This position is with the Delft Bioinformatics Lab, part of the Computer Science department of Delft University of Technology, under the supervision of Prof. Marcel Reinders and Thomas Abeel. In addition, the position is embedded in DataXR, part of the national CropXR programme, for which Auke Damstra is CTO.

As part of knowledge security, TU Delft conducts a risk assessment during the recruitment of personnel. We do this, among other things, to prevent the unwanted transfer of sensitive knowledge and technology. The assessment is based on information provided by the candidates themselves, such as their motivation letter and CV, and takes place at the final stages of the selection process. When the outcome of the assessment is negative, the candidate will be informed.