Bioinformatician

***Please note: all applications must be sent to opportunities@esoxbiologics.com along with a cover letter. See details below***

Job description

Title: Bioinformatician, 40 hours per week – BI002. 

Location: White City, London, UK (minimum three-days onsite per week).

Compensation: £38-65,000 plus equity, pension, health insurance and free lunch!

Posted date: December 19th, 2024.

Closing date: February 1st, 2025.

Start date: March 31st, 2025, or before.

Company: Esox Biologics is a bio-tech company ensuring food security by improving the efficiency of aquaculture. We do this by preventing the spread of infectious diseases among aquatic animals. Aquaculture is the fastest growing food production sector yet aquatic veterinary medicine lacks innovative tools to detect and prevent the spread of aquatic pathogens. With more than ninety percent of aquatic microorganisms uncharacterised and undescribed by science, our Detect platform harnesses metagenomics to resolve this biological dark-matter to reduce mortalities in aquaculture. 

Role: We are hiring a Bioinformatician to join our Detect team in an office-based role. Our Detect platform enables clients to identify total microbiomes sampled from livestock and their environments. Stored and visualized through our web-app, this data advances their understanding of aquatic ecosystems. Alongside the lead bioinformatician, you will be writing and maintaining our bioinformatics and cloud computing workflows, introducing automation and transparency throughout. Additionally, you will be generating insights that support our R&D and product development programmes and working with client data. This role would suit a candidate that would be interested in combining periods of focused pipeline development with periods of pipeline maintenance and meeting ad-hoc bioinformatics requirements. Please note that the salary and title associated with this role will be dependent on the experience of the successful candidate.

Team: Esox Biologics is a tight-knit and highly collaborative team of scientists, engineers and creatives with a passion for translating innovative technologies into real-world solutions. Backed by private equity and generating revenue, Esox Biologics has established its position within aquaculture by transforming existing knowledge of aquatic microbiomes. You will be the company’s second full-time bioinformatics hire. 

Responsibilities

·       Pipeline development and maintenance: Work with your team to maintain and continually develop our bioinformatics pipelines for processing sequencing data, compiling our database and generating metagenomic insights. 

·        Build and Maintain a Metagenome-Assembled-Genome (MAG) pipeline: Work with your team to build and maintain a MAG assembly pipeline that integrates into our long-read sequencing platform. This pipeline will enable the assembly of viral, prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes.

·       Data management: Work with your team to extend our existing Azure infrastructure to store a growing collection of sequenced reads, contigs, MAGs, and associated metadata.  

·       Collaboration with lab team: Work in close collaboration with the lab team to ensure data generated from the bioinformatic pipelines is experimentally validated.

·       Product development: Actively contribute to the planning and development of new product features, overseeing the journey from conceptualization to launch.

Requirements:

·       Essential – A degree in Computational Biology/Genomic Science/Bioinformatics or equivalent discipline is essential. We will consider candidates with varied levels of additional experience in academia or industry. 

·       Essential - Strong independent work ethic: You will be working in a small team requiring a self-motivated individual who thrives in an autonomous yet highly collaborative role.

·    Essential  - Collaborative and growth-focused mindset: We value individuals who actively seek opportunities to learn, welcome constructive feedback, and engage thoughtfully in team discussions to contribute ideas effectively. Candidates should demonstrate confidence in their skills while respecting diverse perspectives and fostering teamwork.

·   Essential – Experience developing reproducible bioinformatics workflows, ideally using Python and Snakemake, including automated testing.

·       Essential – Experience writing clear code and documentation such that work can be traced, replicated and reproduced.

·    Essential – Candidates must have the right to work and live in the UK. We are unable to sponsor visas currently.

·       Highly Desirable - Experience with quality control of Nanopore sequencing data.

·       Highly Desirable – Experience with metagenomics, phylogenetics and taxonomic binning.

·       Desirable – Experience with management of Azure cloud execution and blob storage. 

·       Desirable – Experience managing growing biological databases.

·       Desirable – A passion for aquaculture, aquatic organisms, and sustainable food systems. 

Technical Skills

·       Must-Have: Python/Git/Bioinformatics workflow development/Conda

·       Desirable: Pytest/GitHub Actions/Nanopore QC/R

·       Nice-to-Have: Assembly, Binning & Annotation/Azure computation and storage/Quarto/Docker/SQLAlchemy

All staff at Esox Biologics are expected contribute towards our enjoyable work environment by treating colleagues and partners with respect. 

Recruitment Process

All applications should be sent to opportunities@esoxbiologics.com. Please include a CV with the contact details of two referees. Please also include a brief cover letter to describe how your previous experiences align with the requirements of this role and why you have applied for this position. 

·       Chat with lead bioinformatician

·       Technical test

·       In-person interview + meet the team

·       Offer