The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) is seeking a Bioinformatician to join the European Variation Archive (EVA - https://www.ebi.ac.uk/eva/) team. This is a maternity cover for 12-months. The EVA is a primary open repository for archiving, accessioning, and distributing genetic variation, including single nucleotide variants, short insertions and deletions (indels), and larger structural variants (SVs) in any species. It aims to provide access to data, to foster data re-use, to enable reproducibility in Biomedical, agricultural and microbial research in line with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles. The EVA is also an ELIXIR Deposition Database and an active contributor to international standards through the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH).
Your Role
As a Bioinformatician you will participate in the development of key components of the future EVA infrastructure. You will be involved in designing or implementing the EVA’s submission tools but also how variants are represented on pangenomes and help create new data models for complex structural variants.
The successful applicant will collaborate with the team lead, helpdesk officers and developers to support our community in using our submission process. You will be involved in defining variation representation that will allow the EVA to scale to billions of variants with thousands of sample genotypes across hundreds of species. The EVA develops services that allow scientists to make the results of their research available to the community, and to access data submitted by others using web portals and REST APIs. The team follows agile methodology to track work and uses Git, JIRA, and Confluence in a collaborative and open source environment.
The EVA project is part of the EGA and EVA team led by Thomas Keane, within the Omics Section at EMBL-EBI. We work closely with other members of the Omics Section, and share our expertises to provide continuous training to our technical staff.
Your Responsibilities Will Include
- Support our communities in using our submission tools and provide feedback to the development team to improve user-facing submission interfaces and documentation
- Develop, maintain, and improve data model and metadata schemas used to represent the EVA submissions
- Investigate existing tools for representation of variation on pangenome
- Participate in an international effort to standardise file formats, data structures, and distribution protocol for variation data
- Provide training and expertise for the rest of the team and the EVA’s wider community on data and metadata models
You Have
- A postgraduate degree, or have equivalent experience in biological sciences, computer science, bioinformatics, or a related field
- Demonstrated experience in analysing or interacting with genetic variation data
- Scripting language frequently used in bioinformatics such as Python
- Experience of working in unix environments
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills including strong written and verbal communication in English
- Experience working in a professional or academic context in multi-person team delivering production services
You might also have
- Experience working with ontologies
- Experience working with structural variants
- Experience with build and deploy technologies such as Docker
- Experience with SQL and/or NoSQL databases
Why join us
Do something meaningful
At EMBL-EBI you can apply your talent and passion to accelerate science and tackle some of humankind's greatest challenges. EMBL-EBI, part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, is a worldwide leader in the storage, analysis and dissemination of large biological datasets. We provide the global research community with access to publicly available databases and tools which are crucial for the advancement of healthcare, food security, and biodiversity.
Join a culture of innovation
We are located on the Wellcome Genome Campus, alongside other prominent research and biotech organisations, and surrounded by beautiful Cambridgeshire countryside. This is a highly collaborative and inclusive community where our employees enjoy a relaxed atmosphere. We are committed to ensuring our employees feel valued, supported and empowered to reach their professional potential.
Enjoy Lots Of Benefits
- Financial incentives: Monthly family, child and non-resident allowances, annual salary review, pension scheme, death benefit, long-term care, accident-at-work and unemployment insurances
- Flexible working arrangements
- Private medical insurance for you and your immediate family (including all prescriptions and generous dental & optical cover)
- Generous time off: 30 days annual leave per year, in addition to eight bank holidays
- Relocation package including installation grant (if required)
- Campus life: Free shuttle bus to and from work, on-site library, subsidised on-site gym and cafeteria, casual dress code, extensive sports and social club activities (on campus and remotely)
- Family benefits: On-site nursery, 10 days of child sick leave, generous parental leave, holiday clubs on campus and monthly family and child allowances
- Benefits for non-UK residents: Visa exemption, education grant for private schooling, financial support to travel back to your home country every second year and a monthly non-resident allowance.
For more details please see our employee benefits page.
What Else You Need To Know
- Contract duration: This position is a max. 1 year fixed-term contract until latest 31/12/2025 (whichever is shorter) to provide maternity cover. We are looking for someone who can commence immediately.
- International applicants: We recruit internationally and successful candidates are offered visa exemptions. Read more on our page for international applicants.
- Diversity and inclusion: At EMBL-EBI, we strongly believe that inclusive and diverse teams benefit from higher levels of innovation and creative thought. We encourage applications from women, LGBTQ+ and individuals from all nationalities.
- EMBL is a signatory of DORA. Find out how we implement best practices in research assessment in our recruitment processes here.
- Job location: This role is based in Hinxton, near Cambridge, UK. You will be required to relocate if you are based overseas and you will receive a generous relocation package to support you.
- How to apply: To apply please submit a cover letter and a CV through our online system. We aim to provide a response within two weeks after the closing date.
