Platform Engineer (we have office locations in Cambridge, Leeds and London)

Genomics England is a global leader in enabling genomic medicine and research, focused on creating a world where everyone benefits from genomic healthcare. Building on the 100,000 Genomes Project, we support the NHS’s world-first national whole genome sequencing service and run the growing National Genomic Research Library, alongside delivering numerous major genomics initiatives. By connecting research and clinical care at national scale, we enable immediate healthcare benefits and advances for the future. 

Our mission is to provide the evidence and digital systems so that by 2035 genomics could play a role in up to half of all healthcare interactions, whilst securing the UK’s position as the best place to discover, prove and benefit from genomic innovations. 

We are accelerating our impact and working with patients, doctors, scientists, government and industry to improve genomic testing, and help researchers access the health data and technology they need to make new medical discoveries and create more effective, targeted medicines for everybody. 

Behind the Healthcare and Research outcomes, Genomics England delivers through designing, developing and operating complex healthcare software systems. 

We're on the cusp of big changes with the real prospect of genomics becoming the fabric of everyday healthcare through the lifetime - from birth to old age.

Are you an experienced Platform Engineer with strong AWS capability, confident building and evolving scalable, secure infrastructure that supports complex, data heavy workloads in a modern engineering environment 

Here at Genomics England, our platform underpins everything we do, enabling high throughput genomic analysis at scale, securely and reliably 

This impactful engineering role sits within our Computational Genomic Interpretation Pipelines Platform, supporting how we run and evolve distributed genomic workflows, including Nextflow based pipelines and emerging orchestration patterns across healthcare services 

We are entering a key phase of platform evolution, including simplification, clearer separation between pipelines and orchestration, and supporting increasingly large scale and distributed genomic workloads. It is a strong time to join, shape direction, and directly influence how the platform develops. 

What you will be doing day-to-day: 

• Designing, building and maintaining infrastructure across AWS, and hybrid environments, for use across bioinformatics pipelines and teams. 

• Designing, building and maintaining platform capabilities that enable orchestration and execution of large-scale genomic pipelines 

• Working closely with bioinformatics engineering squads to support Nextflow native workflows and pipeline modernisation  

• Automating deployment, infrastructure provisioning and operational processes using Terraform, Python, Bash and similar tools  

• Design, build and maintain new container management capabilities, with a goal of providing secure container builds on demand for Nextflow processes (for example using tooling like Seqera Wave).  

• Re-imagining our CI/CD pipelines and tooling, providing them as-a-service to the bioinformatics teams that leverage the platform. 

• Implementing monitoring, logging and alerting capabilities and patterns to improve observability across distributed the bioinformatics workflows that run on the platform. 

• Configure and manage HPC compute environments, both AWS and on-prem, through tooling such as Seqera Platform. 

• Troubleshooting platform and workflow issues across multiple layers, driving long term fixes  

• Supporting cost optimisation, performance tuning and capacity planning across AWS and on prem systems  

• Producing clear documentation and sharing knowledge across engineering teams  

• Helping embed DevOps ways of working across squads and enabling teams to operate with more independence  

What you will bring: 

• Strong experience with AWS across compute, storage, networking and security  

• Solid Terraform experience for building and maintaining repeatable infrastructure  

• Strong scripting ability in Python, Bash or similar  

• Experience designing, implementing and supporting platform patterns & capabilities for consumption by stream/business-aligned teams.  

• Experience operating production grade platforms in complex distributed environments  

• Understanding of CI/CD tooling and DevOps practices such as GitLab CI or Jenkins  

• Comfortable working in data heavy, high throughput systems  

• Collaborative approach with confidence working across teams and influencing technical direction  

Nice to have - but not required: 

• Experience working in genomics, bioinformatics or healthcare data platforms  

• Familiarity with workflow orchestration tools such as Nextflow, Seqera Platform, Seqera Wave or equivalents 

• Exposure to HPC environments or large scale scientific compute workloads  

• Understanding of regulated or security sensitive environments, particularly Software as a Medical Device 

• Experience working in a Platform Team as defined in Team Topologies. 

• Experience contributing to platform modernisation or evolution programmes  

 
If you are a proven and capable Platform Engineer, with strong hands-on experience and driven by solving complex engineering scale and orchestration problems in real world systems, this is a role where your work has visible impact across research, engineering, and ultimately patient outcomes.
 

Qualifications are not mandatory; however, AWS, Terraform, or Automation certifications are welcome and are highly beneficial.

Salary From: £71,300 pa
Closing Date: Tuesday 12th May @ 23:00 (UK time)

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, plus additional leave for long service, and also 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.