Computational Biology Researcher (Research Coding Tasks)

What you'll do

You take a computational biology paper that released its code, ideally yours, and remove the implementation of its central method. The remainder is packaged so an AI agent has to rebuild that method and beat the authors' results on the paper's benchmarks. You write the statement, choose held-out workloads and per-metric pass thresholds, and provide a hidden reference solution plus a second solution that beats the bar. Reviewing agent attempts comes later.

The ad's focus is tools for read alignment, genome assembly, indexing and variant calling. Those are tools whose quality is measured on sequencing data (speed, memory, accuracy), so the hard part of this role is likely choosing held-out datasets and thresholds that are fair and reproducible. The ad does not say which datasets are supplied.

What you need

• Published computational biology research with released code; the ad names Bioinformatics, RECOMB, ISMB or Genome Research, or comparable venues
• A PhD in computer science or a related field, completed or in progress (the education line says CS, though the field is biology-facing)
• A link to a paper you authored and its code, plus its headline result, both required on the application form

Nice to have

• First-author papers reporting measured improvements over a baseline
• Comfort with Docker and reproducible benchmark setups
• Depth in read alignment, genome assembly, indexing and variant calling tools

What it pays

The AfterQuery board headlines $80/hour for this role. The ad text itself gives a per-task figure instead: $200 per approved task, with each task taking a few hours. Payment only follows approval, so a task that is rejected earns nothing for the time spent. The listing does not publish payment frequency, minimum weekly hours or monitoring terms; the AfterQuery company page covers what is known about how contractors are paid.

Worth knowing

Good:

• You work from your own paper and code, so the domain knowledge is already in your head
• Fully remote and asynchronous, with no shifts
• Suits tool developers more than wet-lab biologists; no lab work is involved

Less good:

• Pay is per approved task, so the hourly figure depends on how quickly you build and validate a task
• The bar for a task is high: you must supply a hidden reference solution and a second solution that beats the authors' results, which takes real engineering time
• The ad says candidates go through background checks, and the application needs a paper link, its code and a headline result up front
• The ad warns that candidates who do not meet the stated requirements are deprioritised, so apply only if you fit

About this listing

Read from the AfterQuery Experts board on 29 October 2026. This is one of twelve Research Coding Tasks roles that share a template across different research fields; this write-up covers the specifics of this field. The listing does not give an application deadline or a number of openings. See AfterQuery.