Hybrid Research Software Engineer, Generative Biology

at Ellison Institute of Technology Oxford

• Job title: Research Software Engineer, Generative Biology
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Mid level, Senior
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: AWS, Azure, Cloud, Docker, Google Cloud Platform, Java, Kubernetes, Python, Rust
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Oxford, United Kingdom

About the role

• Research Software Engineer at the Generative Biology Institute developing software solutions for biological research. Collaborating with scientists to optimize computational workflows and advance scientific goals.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop high-performance, maintainable, and reusable research software to support large-scale biological and biomedical data analysis.
• Collaborate with researchers to translate scientific requirements into robust computational solutions and production-grade tools.
• Build and optimize AI and scientific data processing pipelines, using modern workflow management systems (e.g., Nextflow, Snakemake, CWL, WDL, etc).
• Implement software engineering best practices, including version control (Git, CI/CD), testing, continuous integration, and documentation.
• Benchmark, profile, and optimize computational workloads for maximum performance, scalability, and efficient use of HPC and cloud environments.
• Work closely with the HPC team to ensure seamless deployment and scaling of applications across on-premise and hybrid infrastructures.
• Support reproducibility and transparency in research through containerization (Singularity, Docker, etc) and workflow orchestration (Nextflow, Kubernetes, OpenHPC, etc).
• Contribute to long-term software and infrastructure strategy in alignment with the Head of Scientific Compute.
• Additional responsibilities at the senior level: Collaborate with GBI staff to research novel compute platforms (e.g. novel ASICs, or Quantum Computers).
• Lead research and development into novel scientific workflow technologies (such as cloud-aware workflow schedulers, scientific data management solutions, quantum algorithms, etc)
• Develop APIs, services, and data interfaces that enable interoperability between systems and research platforms.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computational Biology, Engineering, or a related field (PhD desirable)
• 3+ years (5+ years at the senior level) of professional experience in software engineering, preferably within a scientific or research environment.
• Ability to work closely with multidisciplinary research teams to deliver computational tools that advance scientific goals.
• Strong communication skills for explaining technical concepts to scientific audiences and non-specialists alike.
• Proven track record of mentoring, collaboration, or technical leadership in research computing projects.
• At the regular level: Experience working with workflow management systems (Nextflow, Snakemake, CWL, or WDL).
• Experience integrating software into HPC or cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure, or hybrid systems).
• Understanding of scientific computing, or data science workflows.
• At the senior level: Familiarity with parallel and distributed computing frameworks and techniques (MPI, CUDA, OpenMP, etc).
• Extensive experience working with workflow management systems (Nextflow, Snakemake, CWL, or WDL).
• Experience with bioinformatics, computational biology, scientific computing, or data science workflows.
• At all levels: Proficiency in one or more key programming languages (e.g., Python, Julia, C/C++, Java, or Rust).
• Proven experience developing software for scientific research, data analysis, or computational biology.
• Strong understanding of modern software engineering practices, including CI/CD, testing, and containerization.

Benefits

• Enhanced holiday pay
• Pension
• Life Assurance
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance
• Hospital Cash Plan
• Therapy Services
• Perk Box
• Electrical Car Scheme