The opportunity
We are looking to add an experienced Data Engineer to play a critical role in designing and scaling the core infrastructure that powers the Digital Health and Discovery Platform (DHDP)’s federated ecosystem. Reporting to the National Director, DHDP, this role will build and optimize data pipelines, support secure data ingestion across institutions and help implement privacy-by-design architecture aligned with regulatory standards.
The Digital Health and Discovery Platform, a research initiative led by the Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI), is a federated AI and data-sharing software product for advancing disease research. The DHDP operates by bringing its software to where the data is located, analyzing it there and delivering the results back to the platform and user.
This is a full-time, temporary position until March 2027.
About the Terry Fox Research Institute
The Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI), named for Canadian icon Terry Fox, is built on Terry's dream to end cancer through research. Established in 2007, TFRI is a registered charity and invests its funds in cutting-edge cancer research through highly collaborative, team-oriented programs and national research networks. Together with its many research and funding partners, TFRI empowers Canada’s brightest researchers to seek out new transformational and precision medicine discoveries to advance our understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer with the goal of significantly improving outcomes for patients.
Responsibilities
Data Pipeline Development
- Design, develop and manage scalable ETL/ELT pipelines for ingesting, transforming, and validating structured and unstructured healthcare data.
- Build data ingestion frameworks that support federated learning environments across multiple institutions.
- Optimize data workflows for performance, reliability and reproducibility.
Cloud & Infrastructure Automation
- Automate infrastructure provisioning and deployment using Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform).
- Implement CI/CD pipelines to support continuous integration and deployment of data services.
- Ensure production-grade monitoring, logging and observability for data pipelines.
Platform Architecture & Governance
- Collaborate with architecture and cyber security teams to implement secure Azure-based data standards.
- Apply privacy-by-design principles, ensuring compliance with healthcare data regulations.
- Contribute to data modeling, warehousing strategies and standardized data schemas for multi-site interoperability.
Collaboration & Innovation
- Partner with research, clinical and business stakeholders to align data solutions with strategic objectives.
- Evaluate and integrate emerging technologies in big data, distributed computing and federated learning.
- Contribute to documentation, best practices and scalable engineering standards across the platform.
Qualifications
- 3 - 4 years of experience as a Data Engineer in cloud or enterprise data environments.
- Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Azure services, including:
- Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS Gen2)
- Azure Data Factory (ADF)
- Azure Databricks
- Azure Synapse Analytics
- SQL Server
- Hands-on experience with Python, PySpark and T-SQL.
- Experience designing and maintaining ETL pipelines in Azure Data Factory and Databricks.
- Strong communications and teamworking skills.
- Familiarity with DevOps and CI/CD workflows (Git, Jenkins, Azure DevOps).
- Solid understanding of data warehousing concepts and relational data modeling.
- Experience automating infrastructure using Terraform or similar tools.
- Understanding of healthcare data privacy, security frameworks and compliance best practices.
- Exposure to federated learning or distributed machine learning architectures is preferred.
- Experience working with clinical or biomedical datasets is preferred.
- Knowledge of interoperability standards (e.g., HL7/FHIR) is an asset.
- Experience supporting precision medicine or research data platforms is an asset.
Benefits of working with us!
- Flexible schedule
- Paid vacation
- Paid sick days
- Extended medical and dental coverage
- A work culture that values excellence, creativity, teamwork, learning, fairness and integrity
- A passionate group of high-performing teammates across Canada
Join us!
If you are passionate about making a difference in cancer research, we invite you to submit your application. This position is open to candidates residing in Canada. Please include a cover letter, resume and any relevant supporting documents. Applications can be submitted through Indeed or emailed to hr@tfri.ca.
Application Deadline: job requisition will be open until filled.
We appreciate all applications, but only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.
We recognize the importance of diversity and equity in our workforce and encourage all qualified applicants to apply, including Indigenous persons, women, persons with disabilities, minorities and other underrepresented communities.
Salary: $110,000 - $130,000