Staff Software Engineer (Genetics)

We are hiring a Staff Software Engineer to join our Data Team. This is a crucial position that will enable us to achieve project deliverables this year. You'll support our Genetic Data Squad, looking at withdrawals, supporting pipeline development and maintenance to support our imputed releases. If you're looking for a new challenge, have experience working with genetic data and want to support our goals, than we'd like to see your application.

Our Future Health will be the UK’s largest ever health research programme, bringing people together to develop new ways to detect, prevent and treat diseases. We are a charity, supported by the UK Government, in partnership with charities and industry. We work closely with the NHS and with public authorities across all nations and regions of the UK.

Our plan is to bring together 5 million volunteers from right across the UK who will be asked to contribute information to help build one of the most detailed pictures we have ever had of people’s health. Researchers will be able to use this information to make new discoveries about human health and diseases. So future generations can live in good health for longer.

 Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Responsible for several interacting data pipelines/flows, ensuring these meet the user, business and technical requirements that have been prioritised. 

• Leading hands-on development of new features, including features to support the deployment of data pipelines at scale (setting up access control configurations, deploying new clusters, building and maintaining databases, deploying database replicas and more) 

• Be able to create MVP development environments and prototype pipelines that can quickly and effectively demonstrate a potential solution. Where possible these would draw on existing workflows developed in industry and academia. 

• Anticipate problems that could occur with pipelines and take action to prevent them. Identify and describe problems when they occur and be able to develop solutions that address them for the short and long term.  

• Provide technical leadership to other engineers, setting standards and helping other people to meet them. 

• Support effective multidisciplinary working with other teams, helping teams understand the role of software engineering in Our Future Health and how to work effectively together. 

• Keep abreast of best practice in software engineering across industry, research and Government, and identify opportunities to bring these into Our Future Health. 

Though we don't expect you to have experience with each point, to be successful you'll need to have experience working within similar software positions and data.

• Highly proficient in cloud engineering (preferably in Azure; AWS and GCP) 

• Highly proficient working with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible) 

• Demonstrable knowledge and experience in building solutions centred around moving and processing large amounts of data at pace and scale, using cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes, Helm and Docker. Experience with storing, searching and filtering large scale data. 

• Experience in operationally managing software components/service once live, including:  observability best practises, logging best practises, error reporting, debugging and live incident management. Experience using tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, New Relic etc. 

• Highly proficient in Python. 

• Experience in data modelling and design patterns; in-depth knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL) and familiarity with data lakehouse formats (storage formats, e.g. Apache Parquet, Delta tables) 

• Experience with Spark, Databricks, data lakes/lakehouses. 

• Experience working with external data suppliers (defining requirements for suppliers, defining Service Level Agreements, attending joint meetings when needed) 

• Experience working in an Agile development team following best practices including GitHub, code review, unit tests, TDD and CI/CD 

• Experience leading software projects and developing people and teams from a technical perspective. 

• Generous Pension Scheme – We invest in your future with employer contributions of up to 12%.
• 30 Days Holiday + Bank Holidays – Enjoy a generous holiday allowance with the flexibility to take bank holidays when it suits you.
• Enhanced Parental Leave – Supporting you during life’s biggest moments.
• Career Growth & Development – £500 per year to spend on Learnerbly, our learning platform, plus regular appraisals and development opportunities.
• Cycle to Work Scheme – Save 25-39% on a new bike and accessories through salary sacrifice.
• Home & Tech Savings – Get up to 8% off on IKEA and Currys products, spreading the cost over 12 months through salary sacrifice
• £1,000 Employee Referral Bonus – Know someone amazing? Get rewarded for bringing them on board!
• Wellbeing Support – Access to Mental Health First Aiders, plus 24/7 online GP services and an Employee Assistance Programme for you and your family.
• A Great Place to Work – We have a lovely Central London office in Holborn, and offer flexible and remote working arrangements.

Join us - let’s prevent disease together.