Main Purpose of the Job

The post holder will contribute to the activities of Core Bioinformatics, with a particular focus on infrastructure maintenance and development. Familiarity with Linux, containers (e.g. Apptainer), and HPC are important. The post holder will contribute to the improvement and management of our new private cloud system based on OpenNebula.

Key Relationships

You will report to the Head of Bioinformatics and work closely with the Core Bioinformatics scientists.
Our team liaises with Research Computing, the group that manages the infrastructure for all Norwich Biosciences Institutes and with the CLIMB operations team.
You’ll also work more closely with some group leaders and their team members (mainly postdocs) for specific tasks or projects.

Main Activities & Responsibilities

Contribute to the operations of the core services at QIB (Galaxy, IRIDA, Automated pipelines)

Contribute to maintaining services and servers operational and up-to-date

Contribute to maintaining an updated software and pipelines’ catalogue

Provide bioinformatics support to analyse NGS datasets (e.g. bacterial isolates, metagenomes, RNA-Seq, also from murine and human samples)

Manage tickets from the support system of Core Bioinformatics

Contribute to maintaining an updated documentation wiki

Deliver internal training and seminars

Contribute to research papers (bioinformatics or data analysis sections)
 

Occasionally, participate in national or international conferences or meetings
 

In coordination with the line manager, additional tasks related to the efficient operation of core bioinformatics may also be undertaken.
 

Education & Qualifications

Requirement

Importance

PhD in Bioinformatics or related subject (or demonstrable equivalent professional experience)

Essential

Degree in computer engineering, bioinformatics or a similar subject

Essential

Specialist Knowledge & Skills

Requirement

Importance

Data science and visualisation skills using R or Python

Essential

Expert user-level experience of Linux (storage, network)

Essential

Understanding of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) applications

Essential

Ability to troubleshoot issues arising from web services such as Galaxy Project

Essential

Administration of Galaxy Project instance

Desirable

Basic knowledge of RDBMS databases (MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL)

Desirable

Knowledge of other aspects of bioinformatics (protein sequence or structure analysis, transcriptomics, metagenomics)

Desirable

Knowledge of microbial genomics and phylogenomics

Desirable

Relevant Experience

Requirement

Importance

Experience using Docker or Singularity (Apptainer) containers

Essential

Experience in workflow development, better if Nextflow DSL2

Desirable

Development of open source projects (available on github etc.)

Desirable

Knowledge or affinity to microbiology

Desirable

Management and Leadership

Requirement

Importance

Promotes and strives for continuous improvement

Essential

Project management skills

Desirable

Interpersonal & Communication Skills

Requirement

Importance

Ability to write clear technical documentation

Essential

Good communication skills, both written and verbal

Essential

Good interpersonal skills, with the ability to work well as part of a team

Essential

Ability to present in public

Desirable

Ability to communicate effectively with scientists from a broad spectrum of research

Desirable

Additional Requirements

Requirement

Importance

Attention to detail

Essential

Promotes equality and values diversity

Essential

Willingness to embrace the expected values and behaviours of all staff at the Institute, ensuring it is a great place to work

Essential

Able to present a positive image of self and the Institute, promoting both the international reputation and public engagement aims of the Institute

Essential

Willingness to work outside standard working hours when required

Essential

Quadram Institute Bioscience

The Quadram Institute is at the forefront of a new interface between food science, gut biology and health, developing solutions to worldwide challenges in food-related disease and human health.

We are engaged in fundamental and translational food and health research, alongside clinical studies, endoscopy and industry, working together to become a leading international hub for food and health research, combining scientific excellence and clinical expertise, delivering impacts on patient care and accelerating innovation.

The Quadram Institute is a diverse and multicultural scientific community. We thrive on our international and European links, appointing staff from across the world. Any candidate who would like further information on current or anticipated immigration requirements can contact the HR Team on +44 (0)1603 450888 or nbi.recruitment@nbi.ac.uk.

For more information about working at Quadram Institute Bioscience, please click here.

Department

Science Operations

Group Details

The post holder will be embedded in the Core Bioinformatics team to support the implementation and maintenance of the infrastructure and software platforms, as well as supporting research done by the research groups at the Quadram Institute.
The Core Bioinformatics team at QIB is a diverse and dynamic group where we share our expertise and promote the adoption of best practices.

We support research groups at different levels: we provide efficient platforms for independent bioinformaticians, and we support the analysis of microbial genomics and multi-omics datasets for groups with less bioinformatics expertise.
We are well equipped with access to an HPC and private cloud (OpenNebula).

Our team specializes in creating reproducible and scalable analytical pipelines, prioritizing efficiency. These pipelines are supported by abundant computing resources on our on-premises cloud computing platform or the campus-wide high-performance computing (HPC) cluster.

Within Core Bioinformatics, we manage a Galaxy server, an OpenNebula Cloud instance, and Apptainer packages for the HPC. We also develop Nextflow workflows, and provide internal training.
 

Living in Norfolk

• Visit Norfolk
• Schools in Norfolk
• Childcare in Norfolk

Senior Bioinformatics Engineer

Quadram Institute Bioscience (QIB) have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Bioinformatics Engineer to join the Core Bioinformatics team and define the bioinformatics support behind QIB’s research into gut health, microbiology and food. 

Background:

The Quadram Institute is an interdisciplinary research institute dedicated to understanding how food and microbes interact to promote health and prevent disease. Located in one of Europe’s largest centres of life sciences, QIB has close partnerships with the University of East Anglia, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, the John Innes Centre, and The Earlham Institute. (https://quadram.ac.uk/).

QIB’s Core Bioinformatics team maintains several platforms to facilitate the storage, analysis and publication of researcher’s data. IRIDA and OMERO instances archive sequence and microscopy data, respectively. Computationally intense analyses are completed on the on-site HPC cluster either directly through submitting Slurm jobs via the terminal, or interactively through the Galaxy instance or Cloudgene web service. Furthermore, QIB hosts a private OpenNebula Cloud instance allowing researchers to create customised virtual machines to complete their analysis. The Core Bioinformatics team also contribute to research projects directly by developing pipelines to analyse genomics and metagenomics datasets.

The role:

As part of Core Bioinformatics, the role will primarily consist of maintaining our infrastructure (in particular, the Galaxy Project server and OpenNebula Cloud). This aspect will require experience and familiarity with the Linux Command Line, including some aspects of server administration (ansible, systemd, etc.) and working knowledge of PostgreSQL or similar relational databases. The containerisation of software with Singularity or Docker is a key aspect of this role.
 
The job holder will also provide support to research projects, analysing NGS datasets (usually microbial genomics) mostly using Nextflow pipelines (publicly available or bespoke). The ability to troubleshoot pipeline executions and improve existing pipelines is essential. Knowledge of microbiology and microbial genomics is desirable, but the candidate must be willing to learn more about microbiology and microbiome and make efforts to keep up to date with the latest relevant literature.

The ideal candidate:

You are an experienced bioinformatician or computational biologist with a thorough understanding of current bioinformatics workflows and platforms. You are capable of working independently and can clearly communicate complex issues that may require support from your colleagues to overcome. You have previously held roles that focus on supporting other colleague’s research and have been exposed to maintaining the backends of common bioinformatics platforms such as Galaxy.

As a developer, you should be fluent in Python or R. Some experience with other languages (such as JavaScript, or Perl) will be a plus. Previous examples of creating and executing containerised code is essential. You are most comfortable when using Linux based systems and writing/running bash scripts in a terminal.

Additional information:

This post offers the successful candidate an exciting opportunity to apply and develop their knowledge and skills in the context of cutting-edge microbial genomics and microbiome research. There is a diverse selection of training opportunities on campus, and we encourage participation in relevant scientific conferences.

Salary on appointment will be within the range £44,500 to £55,000 per annum depending on qualifications and experience. This is a full-time post offered on an indefinite basis.

This role meets the criteria for a visa application, and we encourage all qualified candidates to apply.  Please contact the Human Resources Team if you have any questions regarding your application or visa options.

Interviews will be held on 9 June 2025.

We are committed to equal opportunities and welcome applications from all sectors of society.  The Institute supports equality of opportunity within the workplace and expects all employees to share and display these values.  To support our commitment, we have a range of family, faith and diversity friendly working arrangements to help all staff achieve excellence in their area of work.

As a Disability Confident employer, we guarantee to offer an interview to all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for this vacancy.

The closing date for applications will be 19 May 2025

The Quadram Institute Bioscience is a registered charity (No. 1058499) and is an Equal Opportunities Employer.