Biointal — Bioinformatics Agency
A vertically integrated bioinformatics agency serving the St. Louis biotech ecosystem. Infrastructure, analysis, and talent — from a scientist who speaks the language.
The Problem
Hiring bioinformaticians is broken. Traditional recruiters screen for keywords. Staffing firms can’t tell a reproducible pipeline from a spaghetti script. Hiring managers waste weeks interviewing candidates who look good on paper and fall apart on actual code review.
The person best positioned to vet bioinformatics talent is a bioinformatician. Biointal is that person, at scale.
The Product
Biointal is an executive search firm for computational biology. It operates a private registry of pre-vetted bioinformaticians — screened not by résumé but by code audit and domain interview. Employers get access to candidates who are already GitHub-verified for reproducibility, containerization, and workflow tooling. Candidates get matched with roles that are actually a fit.
The positioning is precise: top 3% talent, zero noise.
The Vetting Protocol
Every candidate clears two gates before entering the registry.
Stage 1 — The Code Audit. A submitted GitHub repository is reviewed for reproducibility, Docker/Singularity containerization, Nextflow or Snakemake workflows, and documentation quality. Most candidates don’t pass this stage.
Stage 2 — The Domain Interview. A 30-minute technical screen with a Senior Bioinformatician. Not a LeetCode session — candidates are asked to walk through their own code and explain their reasoning. Biological understanding is tested alongside engineering ability.
Candidates who pass both stages receive the Verified badge and enter the active registry. The badge means something because the bar is real.
The Registry
The talent registry is accessible to approved employers via a gated portal. Public-facing profiles are anonymized by design — no names, no GitHub links, no LinkedIn. Candidate IDs and skill snapshots are shown; contact details unlock only after portal access is granted. This prevents employers from sourcing around the placement fee, protects candidate privacy, and keeps the registry credible.
Current registry: 10 verified candidates spanning single-cell transcriptomics, variant calling, epigenomics, metagenomics, structural biology, clinical oncology genomics, long-read sequencing, proteomics, and RNA biology. Credentials range from MIT and Stanford PhDs to ETH Zürich MScs.
Faceted filtering by tech stack, visa status, experience level, and availability — powered by Pagefind client-side search with no backend required.
Engagement Models
Two hiring paths for employers:
Executive Search (Permanent). Full-service sourcing and vetting for critical roles. Includes a 90-day replacement guarantee. Performance-based fee — Biointal only earns on successful placement.
Contract Staffing (Flexible). Pre-vetted talent on contract with conversion option. Biointal handles payroll, taxes, and legal. Cancel with two weeks’ notice. Designed as a “try before you buy” model for labs that need to move fast but aren’t ready to commit to a full-time hire.
Technical Execution
- Hugo SSG + Tailwind CSS, deployed on Cloudflare Pages — fast, zero-maintenance, no CMS overhead
- Pagefind for client-side candidate search with full faceted filtering — no backend, no database, no latency
- Candidate anonymization by design — IDs instead of names, verified skill tags instead of LinkedIn links; identity unlocks only inside the authenticated employer portal
- Tally.so intake forms for candidate applications and employer access requests — structured data capture without a custom backend
- Employer portal with invitation-only access — separates the public registry preview from the full verified profiles
Current State
Operational. Registry at 10 verified candidates. Vetting protocol running. Employer pipeline in development. The candidate-side funnel (application → audit → interview → verified badge) is live at biointal.com/get-represented.