Senior scientific programmer/Data scientist - Netherlands ALS Center Utrecht • UMC Utrecht

As a Senior Scientific Programmer / Data Scientist at the Netherlands ALS Center, your responsibilities include:

• Help optimize the design of our current (SQLite) database while coordinating with our institutional IT department, to increase the performance of the database.
• Streamlined quality control of data that are entered into the database, and extracted from the database (i.e. detect and correct illogical data),
• Effectively query the database to generate reports for researchers on numbers of samples that fullfill specific criteria (i.e. specific diagnosis, proper informed consent, attached data layers, like MRI or genetics data).
• Generate quality controlled exports of requested data for researchers.
• Modify/ relabel entered data to harmonize with other external datasets on request.
• Quality control the LIMS part of our database to effectively manage serum/ plasma/ DNA/ skin samples and associated data).

Neurology & Neurosurgery consists of six care lines. Instead of a division into departments and medical specialisms, the care lines are formed around the top-referred patient groups with the associated research lines. Within this research group, research is mainly conducted into the neuromuscular disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). This group is among the international top in research in this field. In addition, clinical (medicine) studies are conducted, both sponsored and investigator-initiated.

You will work in a dynamic and esteemed team of researchers and clinicians, and participate in high impact research projects (genetics, phenotyping, imaging, lifestyle/environmental risk factors) of ALS.

• MSc or PhD degree in (Bio)statistics, Informatics, Data science, Epidemiology, Health Sciences or a related field.
• Strong analytical skills with extensive experience in programming and data management or data engineering.
• High standards for quality and accountability.
• Proactive attitude with a can-do mentality.
• Ability to work independently as well as in multidisciplinary teams.
• Initiative and a broad interest in medical research.
• Proven experience with:
  • R, Stata, and SQL
  • Good programming practices such as:
    • Script review
    • Version control
    • Unit testing
    • CI/CD pipelines
• Fluency in Dutch or English, both spoken and written.
• Proficiency in data management or engineering, with a strong focus on quality assurance in programming.

• A salary between € 3493 and € 5504 gross per month (salary scale 10), based on full-time employment (36 hours). 
• Salary increase of 3% from July 2025, according to the collective labor agreement (cao). 
• Contract for a year with ability to prolong upon good evaluation.
• Year-end bonus of 8.3% and holiday allowance of 8%. 
• Pension insurance with ABP. We take care of approximately 70% of the monthly contribution. 
• 100% public transport reimbursement. Are you coming on foot, by bike or by car? You will then receive a reimbursement of € 0.18 per km (by car up to a max. of 40 km one way). 
• Possibilities to develop yourself personally and professionally. 
• The option to select additional employment benefits in exchange for gross salary, such as purchasing a bicycle and memberships.