Bioinformatics & Computational Biology

Where biology meets code: using computers, statistics, and AI to decode DNA, design drugs, and model living systems.

Top pay: highest pay, longest training

• Bioinformatics Scientist: Writes code to make sense of huge biological datasets—genomes, proteins, and cell measurements. Typical pay $120k.
• Computational Biologist: Uses math, simulations, and computer models to understand living systems. Typical pay $122k.
• Machine Learning Scientist (Drug Discovery): Trains AI models to predict which molecules could become medicines or how proteins fold. Typical pay $165k.
• Data Scientist (Life Sciences): Mines data from patients, labs, and health records to find patterns that improve medicine. Typical pay $113k.
• Cheminformatics Scientist: Uses computers to search and design chemicals, predicting which ones could be useful drugs. Typical pay $125k.
• Systems Biologist: Studies how thousands of genes and molecules interact as a network, rather than one at a time. Typical pay $115k.
• Bioinformatics Software Engineer: Builds the software tools and cloud systems that scientists use to process biological data. Typical pay $130k.
• Pharmacometrician: Builds math models that predict how drugs behave in the body to pick the right dose. Typical pay $165k.
• Quantitative Systems Pharmacologist: Builds computer models of whole biological systems to predict how a drug will work. Typical pay $160k.
• Genomic Data Engineer: Builds the pipelines and cloud systems that process huge amounts of DNA and biology data. Typical pay $135k.
• Proteomics Data Scientist: Turns huge mass spectrometry data files into lists of which proteins are in a sample, helping find disease markers and drug targets. Typical pay $125k.

Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship

• Biostatistician: Designs studies and analyzes data to prove whether a treatment really works. Typical pay $105k.
• Phylogeneticist: Builds the 'tree of life' from DNA, figuring out how species are related and when they split apart. Typical pay $85k.
• Bioinformatics Analyst: Runs standard analysis pipelines on biological data and prepares results for scientists. Typical pay $80k.
• Clinical Data Manager: Makes sure data collected in clinical trials is complete, accurate, and ready for analysis. Typical pay $95k.
• Biocurator: Reads research papers and organizes the findings into databases scientists around the world rely on. Typical pay $72k.
• Research Computing (HPC) Specialist: Runs the supercomputers and cloud systems scientists use for big biology calculations. Typical pay $95k.
• LIMS Administrator: Runs the software system that tracks every sample and result in a lab. Typical pay $78k.
• Bioimage Analyst: Writes software to measure what's in microscope images, like counting cells or tracking movement. Typical pay $95k.
• Pathogen Genomics Bioinformatician: Reads the DNA of germs from sick patients to track outbreaks, spot new variants and find where food poisoning came from. Typical pay $98k.

Starter: fastest way in

• Clinical Data Coordinator: Enters and checks study data from patient visits to keep clinical trial records accurate. Typical pay $50k.
• Biological Data Annotator: Labels microscope images, cell scans, and biological data so AI systems can learn from them. Typical pay $42k.
• Research Data Technician: Helps research teams collect, organize, and back up their data. Typical pay $46k.

Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.