Senior Bioinformatics Scientist in Manchester

Job title: Senior Bioinformatics Developer / Bioinformatician

Reports to: Bioinformatics & Software Team Leader / Head of Bioinformatics & Software

Location: Manchester (hybrid role)

Contract Type: Full-time, Permanent

Salary & Benefits: Competitive Salary + Benefits Package

About Yourgene Health:

Yourgene Health is a leading integrated technologies and services business, enabling the delivery of genomic medicine. The group works in partnership with global leaders in DNA technology to advance diagnostic science.

Yourgene primarily develops, manufactures, and commercialises simple and accurate molecular diagnostic solutions, for reproductive health, precision medicine and infectious diseases. The Group's flagship in vitro diagnostic products include non -invasive prenatal tests (NIPT) for Down's Syndrome and other genetic disorders, Cystic Fibrosis screening tests, invasive rapid aneuploidy tests and DPYD genotyping.

Yourgene has a range of innovative DNA sample preparation platforms, powered by Ranger® Technology, the Yourgene LightBench® and Yourgene QS250, ideal for cell free DNA applications in NIPT and oncology including liquid biopsy.

Yourgene also has a global laboratory service network equipped to be a full life-cycle partner for clinical, research and pharmaceutical organisations to support partners at the preclinical, clinical, and post market stage to develop, manufacture, obtain regulatory approval and commercialise new products and services. In addition, Yourgene offers and NIPT and high throughput Covid testing service.

Yourgene Health is headquartered in Manchester, UK with facilities in Taipei, Singapore, the US and Canada.

Our Culture:

Yourgene is a growing, vibrant and exciting place to work, we are looking for committed driven individuals to be part of our next growth journey. Our culture is described by our employee's as collegiate, friendly, professional, innovative, open and fast paced. We have nay social and well-being initiatives run by our Social Huddle that keep our sense of community alive during challenging times that the pandemic has thrown our way. At Yourgene we focus on putting values led programmes in place to ensure that we can attract, retain and develop our people. We want our people to have a career with Yourgene and we ensure that they are recognised and rewarded for their achievements and commitment, everyone plays a critical role in our growth journey.

Description of role:

Yourgene Health, part of Novacyt Group are recruiting for a Senior Bioinformatics Developer / Bioinformatician to provide technical leadership in implementing and optimising data analysis processes, algorithms, systems and software to support the design, development, verification and validation of Yourgene Health products and services with a focus on development of cloud based solutions.

Overall responsibility:

The Senior Bioinformatics Developer / Bioinformatician will provide a high level of bioinformatics expertise in the design, development and maintenance of algorithms and software for use in molecular diagnostic and screening products and services. Bring technical leadership to projects and provide technical assistance to other members of the bioinformatics development team. Liaise internally to help ensure technologies and methods used in test development will meet user needs and product requirements.

Key areas of responsibility:

• Provide technical leadership and a high level of bioinformatics and software expertise in development projects.
• Provide support and provide guidance to junior staff.
• Act as an expert in the development of cloud based software solutions. Oversee transfer of existing products and tools to the cloud based infrastructure.
• Lead the design and execution of studies to refine existing algorithms and to develop novel ones, to convert genomic and other bioinformatic data into actionable clinical information.
• Lead development, verification and validation phases of software applications and tools that implement bioinformatics processing algorithms and pipelines.
• Produce and maintain comprehensive and accurate documentation of bioinformatics studies executed and software developed.
• Work collaboratively with development scientists, supporting them with bioinformatics analysis capabilities to create products, services and processes meeting the User Needs of Yourgene Health’s customers.
• Contribute to support, maintenance and improvement of products, services, and in-house bioinformatics computing resources and associated documentation. Covering hardware, software and also curating and securing of development bioinformatics data.
• As required, manage interfaces with external development contractors to help ensure that implementations of computational algorithms and processes are optimised for Yourgene Health products and services.

Qualifications, Skills and Abilities:

• Further degree (or equivalent) in Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, Scientific Computing or similar, employing applied mathematics and statistics, algorithm development and software programming.
• 5-10+ years of relevant experience.
• Strong knowledge of cloud computing platforms, such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Experience in designing, developing, and managing cloud-based infrastructure and applications. Knowledge of cloud security best practices and compliance requirements.
• Excellent scientific software programming, statistical and quantitative skills, with practical commercial experience of at least 3 appropriate compiled and scripted general purpose and domain specific languages, such as: Java, C#, C, C++, the R System for Statistical Computing, Python, MATLAB, Perl/BioPerl, and UNIX/Linux shell scripting languages. Experience of database design and management systems and SQL is advantageous.
• Use of appropriate statistical analysis and modeling techniques to support interpretation of data produced by development studies.
• Ability to lead, perform and troubleshoot complex bioinformatic analyses independently and to a high level of quality.
• Experience of applying the fundamental elements and workflow of software development processes to predefined timescales, highly preferably in a commercial environment. Preferably with experience of operating ISO/IEC 62304-compliant software development processes.
• Direct experience of working with Next Generation Sequencing data sets is preferable but not essential.
• Enthusiasm, drive, thoroughness, diligence and a willingness to take personal responsibility to ensure that projects are successful.
• Excellent organizational skills and enjoys working to tight timelines.
• Experience of working within interdisciplinary (e.g. scientific/engineering/design) teams is advantageous.
• Able to assimilate knowledge from technically detailed scientific sources: e.g. manuscripts and conference proceedings.

Closing Date:

Sunday 22nd September, 2024

Yourgene Health is committed to encouraging equality, diversity and inclusion among our workforce. The aim is for our workforce to be truly representative of all sections of society and for each employee to feel respected and able to give their best.