Clinical, Microbiome & Translational Research Scientist (PhD)

What you'll do

The niche is the meeting point of microbes, patients and omics data. You write difficult problems with verifiable answers in microbiome and metagenomics research and in clinical and translational bioinformatics: 16S and shotgun metagenomics, virome and host-microbiome analysis, biomarker discovery, clinical genomics and omics-driven precision medicine. You then review AI model answers against those problems for accuracy, rigour and depth, flagging mistakes that only someone from the field would notice.

Each problem carries a rubric and a reference answer anchored in primary literature and accepted methods, and your reasoning must be written clearly enough for another expert to check. Work goes through peer review and feedback rounds. It is remote and contractor based; the ad publishes no weekly hours.

What you need

• A PhD in microbiology, bioinformatics, computational biology, biomedical sciences, immunology, epidemiology or a closely related field
• Hands-on research experience in an academic or industry lab; wet lab time helps but is not required
• English at C1 or above, written and spoken
• In practice, Python and/or R: the ad lists programming as preferred but says it is required in practice

Nice to have

• Postdoc or industry research in microbiome, clinical or translational work
• A publication record, ideally first-author
• Microbiome tooling: QIIME2, Kraken2, MetaPhlAn, HUMAnN, MAG assembly and binning, virome analysis
• Clinical datasets and methods: TCGA, UK Biobank, survival analysis, EHR plus omics integration, oncology or immunology genomics
• Statistics and ML for high-dimensional biological data, Bash and workflow tools
• Prior experience reviewing, benchmarking or writing scientific content

What it pays

The listing gives $45–90/hour. micro1 does not publish how the rate within the band is decided or how often contractors are paid. Epidemiologists and clinical bioinformaticians weighing this against clinical consulting rates should note that the floor is modest for a PhD-only role.

Worth knowing

Good:

• Epidemiology and biomedical sciences PhDs qualify, which is rarer in AI training ads than biology or chemistry
• Wet lab is optional, so dry-lab microbiome and clinical data people are fully in scope
• A specific, named toolset tells you quickly whether your background matches
• 50 openings, High demand, open worldwide

Less good:

• "Required in practice" coding sits under preferred skills, so the real bar is higher than the MUST list suggests
• Like its life sciences sibling, the skills panel lists computational chemistry tools that the description does not use
• Peer review cycles can slow the first paid tasks
• Hours, duration and the end customer are not stated

About this listing

We read this ad on micro1's referral jobs board on 18 October 2026; it had been posted four days earlier. Pay, openings, location and qualifications come from the listing. It shares its template and rate with micro1's Life Sciences Research Scientist ad, which casts a wider life sciences net and leans harder on wet lab experience; this one narrows to microbiome and clinical work. See micro1.