Job Description
We are hiring a Senior Genomic Data Scientist to join our newly established Adult Population Genomics Programme (APGP). This exciting initiative will sequence the genomes of 150,000 adults to better understand how genomics can support preventative healthcare, improve early disease detection, and enable more personalised and proactive interventions.
A key element of the programme is the integration of pharmacogenomics, recognising its potential to support safer and more effective use of medicines across the population.
The Senior Genomic Data Scientist will lead the programme’s pharmacogenomics-focused analytical work. This includes evaluating technologies, benchmarking tools, and developing, validating, and implementing analysis workflows for the detection and reporting of pharmacogenomic variants.
The person in this role will shape the analytical strategy and generate impactful insights from large-scale genomic and health data, helping the programme realise its potential for population-level precision medicine.
This role is based on a 2-year fixed term contract.
Everyday responsibilities include:
- Contribute to study design and planning, in particular from statistics and evaluation perspective (e.g. power calculations, sample size calculations, outcomes modelling).
- Assess and benchmark technologies and bioinformatics tools for processing and analysis of whole genome data (e.g. alignment, variant callers, quality control), relevant genomic to pharmacogenomics and disease risk prediction in adults.
- Collaborate with Bioinformatic Engineers in development of data processing pipelines, including setting up the requirements, validation, testing, and impact assessment.
- Conducting custom computational analyses on whole genome sequencing datasets.
- Researching the scientific literature, identifying new approaches to genome analysis, as well as contributing to the publication and dissemination of our learnings in the form of scientific papers, white papers and conferences.
Skills and experience for success:
- Demonstrated experience in human germline DNA analysis in pharmacogenomics context, ideally with additional expertise other areas such as rare disease genomics, polygenic risk prediction, population genetics, or complex genomic regions (e.g., HLA/KIR).
- Deep understanding and hands-on experience of a broad range of bioinformatic techniques and approaches, especially related to whole genome sequencing, complex loci, haplotypes, and the tools and databases used for pharmacogenomics and human genome variant interpretation.
- Proficiency in programming, including working knowledge of python, and statistics, with experience in cloud-scale or high-performance computing, and understanding of experimental design, sample size, and power calculations.
- Proven experience contributing to genomic research or analysis projects, from planning to delivery, with outputs such as publications, presentations, or large-scale initiative contributions.
- Collaborative, curious, and innovative, able to communicate complex concepts clearly, work effectively across teams, and apply automation approaches to enhance analytical workflows.
Desirable skills:
- Experience leading and driving projects which require collaboration – chairing meetings, communicating complexity to non-technical stakeholders and focusing on the decisions needed to unlock value for study participants.
- Ability to inspire and motivate other members of the team, deliver to deadlines, and focus on delivery-oriented data-driven strategical decisions.
- Excellent analytical and reporting skills.
- Prior experience of working in highly collaborative, cross disciplinary environments.
Qualifications
PhD with postdoctoral, or equivalent, experience, in at least one of the following: Genetics/Genomic with a strong computational component, Statistical genetics, Genetic epidemiology or Bioinformatics with the focus on human genomics.
Additional Information
Salary from: £62,000
Please provide a cover letter explaining how your skills and experience align with this role and its requirements.
Closing date for applications – Monday 2nd March
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 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.
Culture
We have four key behaviours that represent what we would like Genomics England to feel like and the culture we want to encourage, in order for us to achieve our mission. These behaviours help us all work well together, deliver on our outcomes, celebrate our successes and share feedback with each other. You can read about these and other aspects of our culture here Culture | Genomics England
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.
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