Research Fellow in Bioinformatics

Brighton, UK

Full-time considered up to a maximum of 1.0 FTE (37.5 hours) Requests for flexible working options will be considered (subject to business need).

Grade 7 starting at £38,784 to £46,049 per annum, pro rata if part time.

Fixed Term Contract

About the role

The Sussex Bioinformatics lab is seeking a skilled Postdoctoral Research Associate in Bioinformatics to join our team.

You will play a central role in developing the CRUK Data Hub – an online platform making cancer datasets easier to find, access, and reuse in line with FAIR Data principles, working with data scientists at Cancer Research UK and the HDR-UK Health Data Gateway team. As well as web-development, you will work with CRUK-funded, cancer data owners to ensure high-quality metadata is input into the database, you will create guidance and training materials, and support web design to optimise researcher experience.

Alongside this, you will contribute to the Pearl AI: DependANT project, an AI-powered platform enabling oncologists to use tumour DNA/RNA sequencing data to identify targeted therapies and clinical trials. Your responsibilities will include: processing FASTQ and BAM/CRAM files, and producing variant call files, generating input data for AI tools and implementing secure bioinformatics workflows.

You will also help prepare patient-facing documentation, contribute to our business plan for potential investors, and lead demonstrations to oncologists, gathering structured feedback. You will be able to attend CUP (Cancer of Unknown Primary) multidisciplinary meetings, analyse outputs from the pilot study, and collaborate closely with clinicians to ensure clinical impact.

About you

You will recently have completed a PhD in bioinformatics or informatics and will have a passion for turning complex data into real-world impact for cancer patients.

You'll be excited by the challenge of building secure, reproducible workflows that make this process seamless for researchers and clinicians. You'll also have a flair for coding in python and/or Laravel, problem-solving, with experience in web development and a love for writing clean, well-tested code. If you enjoy combining data science, software engineering, and biology into elegant solutions, you'll feel right at home here.

Collaboration will be at the heart of your work: you'll engage with oncologists, researchers, and developers, translating their needs into tools. You'll be comfortable switching between the technical detail of pipelines and the big-picture impact on patient care.

Above all, you'll be curious, proactive, and motivated by the opportunity to help bring precision oncology closer to reality – ensuring every patient gets the right treatment, at the right time.

About our School

In the School of Life Sciences we strive to understand the mechanisms that drive biological and chemical processes and to develop innovative and diverse approaches to enhance human health, technology and the environment. We undertake multidisciplinary research, teaching and engagement across a wide range of subjects, from Chemistry through Cellular and Molecular Biosciences to Conservation Biology.

The School comprises five Departments: Biochemistry & Biomedicine, Genome Damage and Stability Centre, Neuroscience, Ecology & Evolution and Chemistry. We also house the Sussex Drug Discovery Centre which works to deliver the bench-to-bedside translation of our discoveries. The breadth and depth of our cutting-edge research and innovative teaching practice is delivered by a diverse community who work across boundaries to deliver excellence, engage with real world problems and produce impact.

We pride ourselves on our world-leading research and have a strong research economy, with approximately 50% of our income stemming from research and an active grant portfolio of over £50 million. We host or form part of three University Centres of Excellence: the Genome Damage and Stability Centre, Sussex Neuroscience and Sussex Sustainability Research Programme. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, 90.6 % of our Biological Sciences outputs and 84.8% of our Chemistry outputs were rated as world-leading or internationally excellent. We are proud that in both areas, 100% of our Impact cases were rated as world-leading or internationally excellent.

The School is committed to the University's core values of kindness, integrity, inclusion, collaboration and courage. We believe that equality, diversity and inclusion is everyone's responsibility and aim to provide a friendly and supportive environment for all who work, study and visit the School of Life Sciences.

The School of Life Sciences is proud to hold a Silver Athena Swan Award.

Why work here

Our university is situated off the A27, next to the beautiful South Downs where you will enjoy everything that our 150-acre campus has to offer. We are accessible by public transport; Falmer train station is a five-minute walk to campus and several bus stops are located within campus. We also have dedicated cycling paths and encourage our staff to use these with our offering of a cycle to work scheme.

Sussex is a renowned, multi-accredited, research-led International University and this is only possible because of the people that work here. Whether you are a member of Faculty, part of a Professional Services team or a Student, it's our people that make us great and we want you to be part of that.

Find out about our equality, diversity and inclusion

Further Key Information

Please contact Frances Pearl ) for informal enquiries.

The University is committed to equality and valuing diversity, and applications are particularly welcomed from women and black and minority ethnic candidates, who are under-represented in academic posts in Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine and Mathematics (STEMM) at Sussex.

Please note that this position may be subject to ATAS clearance if you require visa sponsorship.

The University of Sussex values the diversity of its staff and students, and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds.

The University requires that work undertaken for the University is performed in the UK.

Visa Sponsorship Queries: This role has been assigned an eligible SOC code and meets the salary requirements for Skilled Worker Sponsorship if full time and appointed at Grade 7.4. Please consult our Skilled Worker Visa information page for further information about Visa Sponsorship.

October 21, 2025 5:59 PM

29 October 2025 via Teams.

As Soon as Possible.

Fixed Term until 20 September 2026.