Senior Scientific Programmer / Senior Bioinformatics Engineer

About Tagomics:

Tagomics has developed a ground-breaking multiomic biomarker discovery platform that offers a step change in genomics-based disease profiling and diagnosis by combining genomics, epigenetics and fragmentomics.

Originating from the pivotal research of Dr. Robert Neely and his team at the University of Birmingham, Tagomics' proprietary technology unlocks DNA-based disease-associated biomarkers spanning genetic, epigenetic, and fragmentomic features. We combine advanced bioinformatics and machine learning approaches to provide unique biological insights and we already have exciting results from a range of cancer patient samples including blood and tissue.

Learn more about our technology from our recent scientific paper:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.16.575381v1

As we gear up for the next phase of our journey, having secured £6.7m in investment to further develop our platform, we have moved to new labs and offices at Illumina Ventures Lab at Granta Park Research Campus near Cambridge as we work towards unveiling our first commercial product.

Tagomics invites a Scientific Programmer / Bioinformatics Engineer to join our multidisciplinary team to make a lasting contribution to a unique technology that will transform our understanding of disease and diagnosis.

About the role:

We are looking for a scientific programmer to accelerate our product development and R&D work-streams, enabling our technical teams to deliver high quality work faster and easier. You will be responsible for designing and maintaining robust, scalable, and cost-effective cloud infrastructure to support our first product - building a platform to underpin future development of our cutting edge multiomic technology.

You can expect to collaborate closely with all areas of the business, to help identify opportunities to improve our computational platform and innovate novel approaches to unique and exciting problems.

Main responsibilities:

• Designing, developing, testing, reviewing, and maintaining specialist scientific software to support R&D and product development
• Design, implement, test, and monitor cloud infrastructure to support bioinformatics analysis pipelines
• Lead technical decision making on software development projects
• Coordinate, manage, and integrate software development activities to ensure timely delivery
• Championing software development best practices throughout the team
• Troubleshoot software issues and facilitate remedial actions 
• Collaborating with lab team and other stakeholders to gather requirements and priorities for projects
• Represent bioinformatics team as a subject matter expert in computing in cross team meetings
• Support bioinformaticians development workflows to empower them to deliver high quality work quickly
• Contribute to software development strategy and technology choice across software stack

Essential Requirements:

• Experience with supporting Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) data analysis pipelines
• Experience with programming languages, preferably Python
• Experience with Linux/Unix systems
• Experience with cloud platforms, preferably AWS
• Experience with version control systems like Git
• Experience with containerisation technologies like Docker
• Experience with DevOps tools, processes, and philosophy 

Nice to haves:

• Experience with common analysis techniques and tools for NGS (e.g., alignment, variant calling, etc.)
• Experience with common bioinformatics DSLs (e.g., nextflow, wdl, cwl, snakemake)
• Experience developing software in regulated spaces, i.e., medical devices
• Experience with creating Infrastructure as Code
• Experience with cloud security best practices
• Experience with managing, securing, and monitoring clinical data sources

We are a small but rapidly expanding company – by joining us early in our journey you will gain exposure to the various facets of start-up life and have a unique chance to contribute to our technology and influence our company culture. As we expand, this role has excellent personal development opportunities. 

The role is hybrid (minimum 1 day a week in the office at Granta Park). We offer:

• Competitive salary
• Generous share option scheme
• Matched pension contributions up to 8%
• Private health care
• Performance related bonus scheme 

We offer flexible working and believe in maintaining a sustainable work-life balance. Our modern offices at Granta park are lift accessible and have ample on-site parking as well as bike stands. The campus has a shuttle bus that runs to Cambridge and Whittlesford train stations, an onsite nursery, gym, restaurants and coffee shop. 

We are not currently sponsoring visas for this position. You will need to be legally able to work in the UK. 

Agencies - we will not be accepting speculative CV's for this opening.