Bioinformatics Engineer

Genomics England partners with the NHS to provide whole genome sequencing diagnostics. We also equip researchers to find the causes of disease and develop new treatments – with patients and participants at the heart of it all.

Our mission is to continue refining, scaling, and evolving our ability to enable others to deliver genomic healthcare and conduct genomic research.

We are accelerating our impact and working with patients, doctors, scientists, government and industry to improve genomic testing, and help researchers access the health data and technology they need to make new medical discoveries and create more effective, targeted medicines for everybody.

We are seeking a skilled Bioinformatics Engineer to work on our long-read cancer genome analysis pipeline.

The pipeline utilises cutting-edge genomics techniques to analyse genomes generated by long read sequencing technology, and provide insights on diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic outcomes for patients with cancer.

The Long Read Sequencing Programme is a key component of our Cancer 2.0 Programme which aims to improve outcomes for cancer patients through cutting edge technologies. 

 Our Bioinformatics Engineers are software engineers with extensive experience in bioinformatics and are responsible for developing and maintaining software tools and datasets used to solve a wide variety of bioinformatic needs.

They are also responsible for the high quality and robustness of such tools, following best practices during software design, development, and testing. 

As a Bioinformatics Engineer at Genomics England, you will also be required to follow and contribute to agile practices, as well as to act as a subject-matter expert for bioinformatics. You will be supporting the continuous improvement of our practices, collaborating, and adhering to engineering standards.  

 Everyday responsibilities include:    

• Produce automated tests to validate existing and new code.   
• Contribute to all testing and deployment stages up to the production environment.   
• Produce high-quality code for high throughput sequencing data analysis, genome analysis, workflows and interpretation.     
• Interact with domain experts during the lifecycle of projects to ensure the scientific validity of software products.     
• Contribute to discovery tasks during the initial phase of new developments and achieve understanding of early-stage decisions to inform final software design.     
• Write documentation to achieve an exhaustive log of decisions, designs, tests, results ets, that enable full traceability of processes.     
• Be a proactive member of a squad, adopting agile practices and offering subject matter expertise.    
• Ensure adherence to the various standards and accreditations required for both clinical laboratory practice and software delivery.  

Skills and Experience for Success:    

• Experience in software testing strategies.    
• Solid Python coding skillset.      
• Solid skillset in Bioinformatics, understanding of the standards, data sources and tool chains used in NGS.    
• Proficient in Linux and containerisation techniques (Docker, Singularity).  
• Proficient in collaborative software development practices (code reviews, branching strategies).     
• Excellent technical writing skills.     
• Solid expertise of developing production quality algorithms and software to analyse large data sets.   
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines in a repository / version control system. 
• Experience in building scientific workflows. Experience with Nextflow is highly desirable.   
• Experience handling long reads data (Oxford Nanopore) is desirable. 

MSc equivalent or higher in Software Engineering, Computer Science, Bioinformatics or equivalent experience. 

Salary from £56,000

Being an integral part of such a meaningful mission is extremely rewarding in itself, but in order to support our people, we’re continually improving our benefits package. We pride ourselves on investing in our people and supporting them to achieve their career goals, as well as offering a benefits package including: 

• 30 days’ holiday (plus bank holidays), with additional days for long service awards
• A generous pension scheme of up to 15% combined contribution
• Life Assurance (3 x salary)
• Individual learning budgets for every colleague, a Blinkist account and a wide variety of courses on our portal
• A wide variety of wellness benefits including Gympass, a Headspace account, free weekly Yoga classes
• Enhanced maternity & paternity benefits
• Blended working arrangements

Talk to our Talent Team and find out how a career with Genomics England will benefit you.

#LI-Hybrid

Genomics England is actively committed to providing and supporting an inclusive environment that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion best practice both within our community and in any other area where we have influence. We are proud of our diverse community where everyone can come to work and feel welcomed and treated with respect regardless of any disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, or social background.

Genomics England’s policies of non-discrimination and equity and will be applied fairly to all people, regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, being pregnant or recently becoming a parent, race, religion or beliefs, sex or sexual orientation, length of service, whether full or part-time or employed under a permanent or a fixed-term contract or any other relevant factor. 

Genomics England does not tolerate any form of discrimination, harassment, victimisation or bullying at work. Such behaviour is contrary to our virtues, undermines our mission and core values and diminishes the dignity, respect and integrity of all parties. 

Genomics England operates a blended working model as we know our people appreciate the flexibility. We expect most people to come into the office 2 times each month as a minimum. However, this will vary according to role and will be agreed with your team leader. There is no expectation that staff will return to the office full time unless they want to, however, some of our roles require you to be on site full time e.g., lab teams, reception team. 

Our teams and squads have, and will continue to, reflect on what works best for them to work together successfully and have the freedom to design working patterns to suit, beyond the minimum. Our office locations are Canary Wharf, Cambridge and Leeds.

As part of our recruitment process, all successful candidates are subject to a Standard Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.  We therefore require applicants to disclose any previous offences at point of application, as some unspent convictions may mean we are unable to proceed with your application due to the nature of our work in healthcare.