Senior Bioinformatician at Sanger Institute (Hinxton, UK)

We are seeking a talented bioinformatician to develop and maintain software and pipelines to analyse and improve high quality genome reference assemblies of diverse species across the Tree of Life.

About the program:

The Tree of Life Programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute is dedicated to the generation and analysis of high-quality genome sequences from across eukaryotic biodiversity. The Darwin Tree of Life Project is a major national initiative, led by the Wellcome Sanger Institute, to provide high-quality ‘reference’ genome sequences for all eukaryotic species in Britain and Ireland. The project includes a wide range of partners across the UK such as the National History Museum (NHM), Kew Gardens, The Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, The Earlham Institute, Wytham Woods and the Marine Biological Association (MBA). There are further collaborations and partnerships with the Vertebrate Genomes Project, Aquatic Symbiosis Project, European Reference Genomes Atlas and Earth BioGenome Project.

About you:

You will have sound knowledge of genomics and informatics, ideally with experience of genome assembly and analysis software. You are an enthusiastic problem solver with a strong service mentality and are keen to share and discuss your approaches with the team. You are proficient at developing and implementing your own software solutions, are passionate about writing code and enjoy finding new solutions to technical challenges. Most importantly this role requires an investigative and solution-oriented mindset and excellent communication skills to work effectively within large international consortia.

Essential Skills

Technical Skills

• Degree in a Biological or Computational discipline or equivalent experience


• Previous experience handling large-scale genetic/genomic data


• Experience working with relational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL)


• Good programming skills (Perl, Python, R, MySQL) and comfortable operating in a UNIX/LINUX environment


• Experience with one or more workflow languages (Nextflow, Snakemake, CWL, WDL)


• Demonstrable knowledge of bioinformatics databases and software and experience in implementing it


• Excellent problem-solving skills combined with being proactive and self-motivated

Competencies and Behaviours:

• Excellent critical and problem-solving skills


• Attention to detail and the ability to work to meet timelines


• Ability to quickly adapt to new problems and ideas


• A high level of communication skills to be able to elicit complex requirements from, and convey complex information to, groups with different levels of technical knowledge

Ideal Skills

Technical Skills

• Experience in working with distributed computing multi-node compute systems/clusters (HPC/HTC such as LSF/SGE)


• Knowledge/experience with version control


• Web development experience