Senior Bioinformatician

Senior Bioinformatician - Bioinformatics & Biostatistics

This is a full-time permanent position on Crick terms and conditions of employment.

Summary

The Francis Crick Institute seeks to recruit a collaborative and self-motivated Senior Bioinformatician with extensive experience analysing biological data in a research environment. In this position, you will be working as part of the Bioinformatics & Biostatistics Scientific Technology Platform (STP), a talented and dynamic team where you can apply your bioinformatics skills to technology-driven research questions across the broad range of human health research activities found at the Crick, and particularly the Immunosurveillance Laboratory led by Professor Adrian Hayday.

The Bioinformatics & Biostatistics STP is a centre of excellence in Data Science that leverages its knowledge to facilitate discovery across the Crick and extract biological meaning from large, complex and diverse datasets.

• Work collaboratively across the Crick to co-design experiments, formulate analysis plans and interpret results.

• Perform standard and advanced analyses of high-dimensional, data-intensive and complex research questions across the biomedical research spectrum using bioinformatics, biostatistics, machine learning and AI approaches.

• Empower biologists to understand their datasets, using our broad training portfolio to enable data curiosity and develop analytical skills.

• Design innovative approaches for recurrent and novel projects, and deploy corresponding tools internally, across the Crick and beyond.

You will apply your biostatistics skills to technology-driven research questions across the broad range of biomedical research activities found at the Crick. The successful applicants will have a proven track record in collaborative academic research, including statistical analysis and interpretation of large, complex datasets. You should possess a PhD with significant experience in bioinformatics, mathematics, or statistics biomedical-based research with a large computational component.

Project summary

In this role, you will collaborate with Francis Crick scientists to analyse data from the latest cutting-edge genomic sequencing technologies. As part of a large team of expert bioinformaticians, biostatisticians and data scientists, you will work closely with the scientific groups to generate, interpret and explain analysis results to help drive forward discovery. In particular, you will be deeply involved in this process through close collaborative work with the Immunosurveillance Laboratory led by Professor Adrian Hayday. That laboratory is internationally renowned for its pioneering work on gamma delta T lymphocytes, an evolutionarily conserved second lineage of T cells that the lab has pursued from basic discovery science through to their clinical delivery as a cancer therapeutic. The lab's interests are to understand how these cells respond in multiple conditions, to which end they are applying a spectrum of "omic" approaches, including transcriptomics, peptidomics, and spectral flow cytometry (). You will input on the experimental and analysis design process, build bespoke analysis pipelines using the latest analysis methods, publish work in collaboration with the scientific groups and help develop others through mentoring.

Key responsibilities

• Provide bioinformatics expertise to help Francis Crick scientists achieve their research objectives.

• Provide expertise to inform on the experimental and analysis design process.

• Analyse complex genomic data, using a wide range of biological resources and bioinformatic methods to deliver on complex bespoke analysis goals.

• Interpret, evaluate and apply novel analysis approaches to build bespoke analysis pipelines to solve analysis questions.

• Apply analysis expertise to help scientists interpret results and make research decisions.

• Work closely and intensively with Professor Hayday's group to provide data analysis expertise to help deliver on their research objectives

• Provide bioinformatics support and coaching to members of David's team.

• Work independently at all points of the data analysis workflow.

• Help to develop others by mentoring and sharing expertise and experience.

• Help to support and develop group project management and reporting procedures.

• Continue professional development through maintaining awareness of developments in the wider bioinformatics and research communities.

• Participate and contribute to Crick meetings, workshops and seminars.

• Publish where appropriate.

Key experience and competencies

The post holder should embody and demonstrate our core Crick values: bold, imaginative, open, dynamic and collegial, in addition to the following:

Essential Qualifications, experience and competencies:

• A degree in a relevant subject with an extensive analytical component e.g. bioinformatics, statistics, molecular biology or mathematics.

• Significant experience with varied types of high-throughput sequencing data and analysis.

• A good understanding and experience of working with multiple sequencing applications.

• Experience applying bioinformatics to multiple concurrent projects in a collaborative biological research environment to provide publication-quality analysis results to researchers.

• Excellent scientific analysis skills.

• Significant experience in R or Python with a track record of developing programs and scripts conforming to common coding standards.

• Experience in applying expertise to the experimental and analysis design process.

• The ability to work independently at all aspects of the analysis project workflow.

• Experience in mentoring and sharing expertise with others.

• The ability to organise and prioritise workload within a project management framework.

• Knowledge of molecular and cellular biology.

• Excellent scientific communication skills within a research environment, building highly effective working relationships with the team and customers.

Desirable Qualifications, experience and competencies:

• Familiarity with immunology.

• Familiarity with the application of statistical techniques to biological data.

• Excellent computational skills applied to HPC, big data, software development and web technologies.

• Knowledge of Unix and HPC batch scheduling systems (e.g. SLURM).

• Experience in building and deploying pipelines (e.g. Nextflow) for data science.

• Understanding of software development processes and management.

• Experience with long-read sequencing (e.g. Nanopore) and data analysis.

• Knowledge of other research areas relevant to Crick research.

• Experience in teaching bioinformatics.

Find out what benefits the Crick has to offer:

For more information on our great pay and benefits package please click here:

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion:

We welcome applications from all backgrounds. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities, regardless of ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, pregnancy, age, disability, or civil partnership, marital or family status. We particularly welcome applications from people who are Minority Ethnic as they are currently underrepresented in the Crick at this level.

Diversity is essential to excellence in scientific endeavour. It increases breadth and perspective, leading to more innovation and creativity. We want the Crick to be a place where everyone feels valued and where diversity is celebrated and seen as part of the foundation for our Institute's success.

The Crick is committed to creating equality of opportunity and promoting diversity and inclusivity. We all share in the responsibility to actively promote dignity, respect, inclusivity and equal treatment and it is our aim to ensure that these principles are reflected and implemented in all strategies, policies and practices.

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