Bioinformatician

At Syngenta Crop Protection, we're pioneering solutions that safeguard global food security while championing sustainable agriculture. As a world market leader headquartered in Switzerland, we empower farmers with innovative crop protection technologies that defend against nature's toughest challenges. We unite advanced science with digital solutions to develop intelligent crop protection that maximizes yields while minimizing environmental impact. Join our mission of revolutionizing plant protection from seed to harvest.

At Syngenta, our goal is to build the most collaborative and trustworthy team in agriculture, providing top-quality seeds and innovative crop protection solutions that improve farmers' success. To support this mission, Syngenta’s Digital & Data Science Group in Biologicals Research is seeking a Bioinformatician in St. Johann – Basel (Switzerland) or Jealott’s Hill (UK). This role will support the delivery of ‘omics data to turn microbes and associated natural products into biological agents. You will be asked to analyze and interpret the outcome of scientific experiments with your bioinformatics skills and guide selection, optimization and development of novel biological solutions.

Biologicals research discovers, characterizes, optimizes, and produces novel biologicals derived from nature—naturally occurring microbes, extracts, or molecules that protect plants from pests and diseases or improve plant and soil health. In this role, you will work with Syngenta.

 

• Learn and understand the Biologicals data landscape, key data attributes, and experimental capabilities to identify opportunities for enabling and enhancing science through the deployment of bioinformatics and multi-omics approaches.
• Lead exploration, prototyping, and design of advanced bioinformatics pipelines; streamline and optimize assembly and annotation workflows including visualizations.
• Perform complex and in-depth analysis of microbial and multi-omics datasets.
• Guide and support discovery teams in identifying high-potential microbial candidates, functions, and Mode of Actions (MoA).
• Curate large-scale omics datasets for biomarker, MoA, and trait discovery.
• Work collaboratively to deliver and deploy new approaches, share learning, and drive innovation in digital and data science including technology foresight.
• Support business users with change management initiatives to manage data more effectively.
• Set technical direction, provide mentorship, and ensure scientific rigor and reproducibility across microbial bioinformatics.

Required Qualifications:

• MSc or PhD with extensive experience in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Microbiology, Genomics, Natural Products Biochemistry, or related fields.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience analyzing microbial and multi-omics datasets (academic or industry).
• Strong expertise in microbial genomics, metagenomics, pangenomics, functional annotation and metabolic pathway analysis, identification and characterization of biosynthetic gene clusters, phylogenomics and microbial taxonomy, genome assembly, binning, and quality assessment.
• Strong programming skills in Python and/or R, and experience working in Linux environments.
• Experience building automated workflows (Nextflow or similar) and using agentic AI.

Desired Qualifications: 

• Familiarity with multi-omics integration, cheminformatics, and downstream machine learning applications.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, innovative environment with strong problem-solving capabilities.
• Experience collaborating across multidisciplinary teams to deliver scientific solutions.

Jealott's Hill International Research Centre UK is situated in pleasant semi-rural surroundings between Bracknell and Maidenhead and is the place of work for approximately 800 Syngenta scientists and support staff.  Jealott’s Hill is one of the main global research and development sites and key activities include research into discovery of new active ingredients, new formulation technologies, product safety and technical support of our product range.



What We Offer:

A culture that celebrates diversity & inclusion, promotes professional development, and strives for a work-life balance that supports the team members.

Extensive benefits package including a generous pension scheme, bonus scheme, private medical & life insurance.

Up to 31.5 days annual holiday plus 8 UK bank holidays.

36-hour working week.

Syngenta is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion or any other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status. 

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