Data Engineer for Clinical Data

For almost 50 years, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel has stood for freedom, equality and connectedness. These values are strongly present on our campuses, in our students as well as our staff. At the VUB, you’ll find a diverse collection of personalities: pure innovators and especially people who are 100% their authentic selves. With about 3.500 employees, we are the largest Flemish-speaking employer in Brussels, an international city with which we are all too happy to be connected, and around which our four campuses are located.

2 - Position Description

As a Data Engineer for clinical data, you will develop and operationalize the secure data and integration components that connect hospital research registries with environmental and socioeconomic data. You work closely with the UZ Brussels ICT department, supporting their clinical teams and VUB data scientists.

Project context - BEE:
BEE is an Innoviris Research Platform project studying how combinations of environmental exposures, socioeconomic factors and health characteristics influence cardiovascular, neurovascular and other non-communicable diseases in the Brussels-Capital Region. The project combines clinical and population data with environmental information and AI-based analysis. A core requirement is a privacy-preserving technical ecosystem that can securely and reproducibly enrich pseudonymized hospital records with exposomic data.

What are you going to do:

• You contribute to the development of data-driven products: from the Clinical Data Warehouse to innovative applications of AI and Data Science.
• As a Data Engineer, you are building a solid DataOps framework that supports the entire lifecycle of data-intensive products via data pipelines – from efficiently extracting data from various sources to smoothly operationalizing it in a production environment.
• You will design and develop technically the REDCap integration framework around UZ Brussel's REDCap environment for secure handling of structured, unstructured, and non-textual research data.
• You will contribute to the development of the novel VUB-UZ Brussel Digital Health Data Platform, which makes data available to various stakeholders (including for dashboards, AI, and machine learning analytics).
• You will implement reliable interfaces and data pipelines between REDCap and the BEE server, including privacy-preserving geocoding and automated enrichment of patient records with environmental and socioeconomic data for defined locations and time windows.
• You will collaborate with and support researchers, clinicians, data managers, IT engineers and data-protection stakeholders to refine requirements, resolve integration issues, support deployment and end-user adoption, and contribute to the REDCap Ecosystem and reference-architecture deliverables.

For this position, the Brussels Health Campus in Jette will be your work base.

3 - Profile

We are looking for an enthusiastic Data Engineer who recognizes themselves in the following characteristics:

• Passion for ICT: You hold at least a bachelor's degree in a scientific IT-oriented field (engineering, computer science, sciences, …);
• Experience: You preferably have a few years of relevant work experience in Data Engineering and Data Ops, and you know how best to utilize tools such as Docker, Git, Jenkins, and Prefect. Additionally, you have experience in an ETL / ELT environment, and setting up and managing a Data Warehouse / Data Lake is an advantage, as is familiarity with Microsoft Azure data services;
• Programming: A good knowledge of programming in Python and SQL is a must;
• Software design: You highly value good software design, and have applied this in concrete projects;
• Clinical/research platforms: Experience with REDCap, electronic data-capture systems, research registries or hospital data environments is a strong asset;
• Collaboration: You communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders and can translate clinical/research needs into implementable technical solutions. You work effectively in a multidisciplinary team while also being able to work independently;;
• Competencies: You are analytical, you have good communication skills, you are a team player, and you can also work well independently;
• Compliance: You hold privacy and ethics in high regard.

4 - Offer

Are you going to be our new colleague? You’ll be offered a temporary full-time contract (1 year) at a salary linked to Grades 5 or 6, depending on your competences and previous relevant work experience.

At the VUB, you’re guaranteed an open, involved and diverse workplace where you are offered opportunities to (further) build on your career