Your role
In your role as a Bioinformatics Scientist, your main responsibility will be architecting and developing robust software modules and scalable workflows for efficient data release and management of the ever-growing volume of scientific information.

Responsibilities:

• Design and develop new software and data production pipelines for the UniProt database
• Maintain and optimise production pipeline scripts and software modules
• Organise, execute, monitor, and troubleshoot production procedures on daily basis and ensure coordination with other staff members
• Assess new technologies and methods to improve database production environment
• Undertake data collection, preprocessing, analysis, and present information using data visualization techniques
• Evaluate and propose solutions to biological challenges within data production
• Work closely with external scientists to conduct research, develop novel analysis pipelines to improve UniProt data quality
• Communicate and coordinate production work with UniProt Consortium members, software developers, and biologists involved in the database release cycle

The EBI is a world-leading bioinformatics centre providing biological data to the scientific community, with expertise in data storage, analysis and representation. The UniProt team provides a central resource on protein information and a solid set of services and computational analysis of protein data.
UniProt is produced by the UniProt Consortium – a collaboration between the EBI, the Protein Information Resource (PIR) and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB).

You have

• A degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Life Sciences or a related discipline
• At least 2 years professional software development experience in Python and/or Java
• Strong experience in Python or Java programming
• Experience developing computational pipelines using workflow systems like Nextflow
• Experience with SQL and relational database design principles, and Unix shell scripting
• Excellent problem-solving skills with an ability to understand, debug and fix both scientific data and production code
• Familiar with source code management systems e.g. GIT
• Understanding of good coding practices and approaches (OOP, IoC, automated testing, clean code principles, code review)
• Good communication skills
• English language skills are essential
• Ideally, (s)he has already gained experience in a multilingual working environment
• Ability to work as part of a team of people with a range of skills and a diversity of backgrounds
• Enjoy working in an international environment

You may also have

• Good understanding of biological data
• Previous experience working with data centres/computing clusters (e.g. LSF or SLURM)

Contract length: 3 years
Salary: Grade 5 (monthly salary starting at £3,229 after tax but excl. pension & insurances) + other paid benefits based on personal circumstances
Why join us
Do something meaningful
At

• Design and develop new software and data production pipelines for the UniProt database
• Maintain and optimise production pipeline scripts and software modules
• Organise, execute, monitor, and troubleshoot production procedures on daily basis and ensure coordination with other staff members
• Assess new technologies and methods to improve database production environment
• Undertake data collection, preprocessing, analysis, and present information using data visualization techniques
• Evaluate and propose solutions to biological challenges within data production
• Work closely with external scientists to conduct research, develop novel analysis pipelines to improve UniProt data quality
• Communicate and coordinate production work with UniProt Consortium members, software developers, and biologists involved in the database release cycl