Bioinformatics Engineer (we have office locations in Cambridge, Leeds & London)

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 Bioinformatics Engineer that will be based in Genomics England Platform DSS squad. 

As a Bioinformatics Engineer within the Interpretation Platform, the squad plays a pivotal and vital role in developing and advancing the data platform underpinning our user facing decision support system.

Built on AWS services and bespoke python software, the product supports the data life cycle and integration of data from our Bioinformatics Pipelines and other scientific databases, which powers the cancer and rare disease interpretation decision support front ends. 

This is a role for someone that loves solving problems in an environment of complex data, making that data accessible at speed, to enable the analysis and interpretation for the purposes of diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of rare disease and cancer.  

Everyday responsibilities include: 

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

Skills & Experience for Success: 

• Excellent Python coding skillset.
• Solid skillset in Bioinformatics, understanding of the standards, data formats and tool chains used in Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and clinical genomics. 
• Familiarity with NGS tertiary annotation tools and databases. 
• Proficient in Linux, Git, Postgres (or similar RDBMs). 
• Solid expertise of developing production quality algorithms and software to analyse large data sets. 
• Excellent technical writing skills. 
• Experience of working in agile environments and demonstrable effectiveness working in agile squads. 
• Experience in building code using CI/CD. 

Desirable skills/experience: 

• Experience working with AWS serverless technologies including lambda, step functions,S3. 
• Experience working with containerised applications (Docker) 

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

Salary from: £56,000

Closing date for applications – Thursday 18th September.

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: 

• Generous Leave: 30 days’ holiday plus bank holidays, additional leave for long service, and the option to apply for up to 30 days of remote working abroad annually (approval required).
• Family-Friendly: Blended working arrangements, flexible working, enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave benefits.
• Pension & Financial: Defined contribution pension (Genomics England double-matches up to 10%, however you can contribute more if you wish), Life Assurance (3x salary), and a Give As You Earn scheme.
• Learning & Development: Individual learning budgets, support for training and certifications, and reimbursement for one annual professional subscription (approval required).
• Recognition & Rewards: Employee recognition programme and referral scheme.
• Health & Wellbeing: Subsidised gym membership, a free Headspace account, and access to an Employee Assistance Programme, eye tests, flu jabs.

Equal opportunities and our commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace 

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.  Our People policies outline our commitment to inclusivity. 

We aim to remove barriers in our recruitment processes and to be flexible with our interview processes. Should you require any adjustments that may help you to fully participate in the recruitment process, we encourage you to discuss this with us. 

Blended working model

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

Onboarding background checks

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.