Bioinformatician
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
A Bioinformatician uses computers and software tools to study biology and biology-related data. Conducts studies and maintains biology data; may develop specialized bioinformatics software. Analysis may be used for product development at a pharmaceutical company, disease research at a hospital or health policy research at a public health organization.
Job Outlook
There were 86 Bioinformatician job postings in North Carolina in the past year and 4543 in the United States.
In combination with other careers in the Biostatistician industry, which includes the Bioinformatician career, the following graph shows the number of people employed for each year since 2015:
Salary
Many new Bioinformatician jobs have salaries estimated to be in the following ranges, based on the requirements and responsibilities listed in job postings from the past year.
National
The average estimated salary in the United States for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $91,379.
State
The average estimated salary in North Carolina for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $83,260.
Percentiles represent the percentage that is lower than the value. For example, 25% of estimated salaries for Bioinformatician postings in the United States in the past year were lower than $69,822.
Education and Experience
Posted Bioinformatician jobs typically require the following level of education. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list education requirements.
| Education Level | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Associate's Degree | 3.9% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 47.19% |
| Master's Degree | 50.12% |
| Doctoral Degree | 46.2% |
| Other | 1.43% |
Posted Bioinformatician jobs typically require the following number of years of experience. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Years of Experience | Percentage |
|---|---|
| 0 to 2 years | 33.26% |
| 3 to 5 years | 51.34% |
| 6 to 8 years | 9.66% |
| 9+ years | 5.74% |
Skills
Below are listings of the most common general and specialized skills Bioinformatician positions expect applicants to have as well as the most common skills that distinguish individuals from their peers. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is also listed.
Baseline Skills
A skill that is required across a broad range of occupations, including this one.
- Research (59.06%)
- Communication (42.39%)
- Writing (21.7%)
- Presentations (21.33%)
- Management (19.63%)
- Innovation (18.78%)
- Leadership (17.68%)
- Problem Solving (17.46%)
- Troubleshooting (Problem Solving) (14.68%)
- Operations (13.25%)
Defining Skills
A core skill for this occupation, it occurs frequently in job postings.
- Computational Biology (34.12%)
- Next-Generation Sequencing (27.31%)
- Workflow Management (37.37%)
- Ribonucleic Acid Sequencing (27.27%)
- R (Programming Language) (53.73%)
- Bioinformatics (62.19%)
- Biology (44.38%)
- Algorithms (23.02%)
- DNA Sequencing (30.4%)
- Python (Programming Language) (55.87%)
- Genomics (33.49%)
- Data Analysis (47.8%)
Necessary Skills
A skill that is requested frequently in this occupation but isn’t specific to it.
- Data Management (14.07%)
- Project Management (11.51%)
- Immunology (10.33%)
- Oncology (9.67%)
- High Performance Computing (7.91%)
- Genetics (15.82%)
- Java (Programming Language) (12.96%)
- Linux (22.58%)
- Medical Records (9.69%)
- Data Processing (9.83%)
- Clinical Informatics (9.53%)
- C++ (Programming Language) (12.66%)
- Molecular Biology (16.56%)
- Electronic Medical Record (10.06%)
- Computer Science (39.05%)
- Biostatistics (17.97%)
- C (Programming Language) (8.49%)
- SQL (Programming Language) (12.87%)
- Biomarkers (8.42%)
- Scripting (15.41%)
- Informatics (14.72%)
- Proteomics (14.65%)
- Statistics (9.64%)
- Nursing (10.33%)
- Hospital Information Systems (6.71%)
- Version Control (8.37%)
- Amazon Web Services (9.57%)
- Drug Discovery (5.51%)
- Biochemical Assays (9.48%)
- Software Development (8.74%)
- Unix (15.96%)
- Git (Version Control System) (5.17%)
- Bash (Scripting Language) (9.23%)
- Perl (Programming Language) (17.09%)
- Data Science (17.65%)
- Machine Learning (22.4%)
- Statistical Analysis (10.57%)
- Cloud Computing (11.03%)
- Data Visualization (10.57%)
- Biotechnology (6.14%)
Distinguishing Skills
A skill that may distinguish a subset of the occupation.
- Phylogenetics (1.78%)
- Cancer Genomics (3.02%)
- Exome Sequencing (3.85%)
- Whole Genome Sequencing (7.77%)
- Bioconductor (Bioinformatics Software) (5.31%)
- Sequence Analysis (3.64%)
- Gene Expression (7.66%)
Salary Boosting Skills
A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is listed.
- Computational Biology (54.64%)
- Python (Programming Language) (89.47%)
Alternative Job Titles
Sometimes employers post jobs with Bioinformatician skills but a different job title. Some common alternative job titles include:
- Bioinformatics Scientist
- Bioinformatics Analyst
- Clinical Informaticist
- Bioinformatics Research Scientist
- Bioinformatics Specialist
- Nurse Informaticist
- Bioinformatics Intern
- Bioinformatics Researcher
- Informatics Nurse
Similar Occupations
If you are interested in exploring occupations with similar skills, you may want to research the following job titles. Note that we only list occupations that have at least one corresponding NC State Online and Distance Education program.
- Computational Biologist
- Bioinformatics Engineer
- Research Scientist
- Computer Scientist
- Biomedical Scientist
- Data Scientist
- Biologist (General)
- Research Associate (General)
- Statistician
Common Employers
Here are the employers that have posted the most Bioinformatician jobs in the past year along with how many they have posted.
United States
- Frederick National Laboratory For Cancer Research (89)
- University of Pennsylvania (81)
- St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (77)
- Cedars-Sinai (76)
- Emory Healthcare (57)
- University of California (57)
- Kelly Services (51)
- Washington University in St. Louis (51)
- Mount Sinai Health System (47)
- AbbVie (43)
North Carolina
- University of North Carolina (14)
- Duke University (12)
- Labcorp Drug Development (4)
- Thermo Fisher Scientific (3)
- Grail (3)
- Metabolon (3)
- Greenlight Biosciences (3)
- North Carolina State University (3)
- Wake Forest Baptist Health (3)
- Altamira (2)
NC State Programs Relevant to this Career
If you are interested in preparing for a career in this field, the following NC State Online and Distance Education programs offer a great place to start!
All wages, job posting statistics, employment trend projections, and information about skill desirability on this page represents historical data and does not guarantee future conditions. Data is provided by and downloaded regularly from Lightcast. For more information about how Lightcast gathers data and what it represents, see Lightcast Data: Basic Overview on Lightcast's Knowledge Base website.