Data Engineer (we have office locations in Cambridge, Leeds & London)

Company Description

Genomics England partners with the NHS to provide whole genome sequencing diagnostics. We also equip researchers to find the causes of disease and develop new treatments – with patients and participants at the heart of it all.

Our mission is to continue refining, scaling, and evolving our ability to enable others to deliver genomic healthcare and conduct genomic research.

We are accelerating our impact and working with patients, doctors, scientists, government and industry to improve genomic testing, and help researchers access the health data and technology they need to make new medical discoveries and create more effective, targeted medicines for everybody.

Job Description

Are you a skilled Data Engineer who’s confident working at scale, across complex data ecosystems? Keen to take ownership of meaningful pipelines, models and tooling in a unique and impactful environment?

At Genomics England, we deal with some of the most complex clinical and genomic data on the planet, and your work will help researchers, clinicians and scientists use that data to improve patient outcomes.

We’re looking for a proven Data Engineer who knows how to move and transform large volumes of sensitive healthcare and genomic data, build scalable infrastructure, and enable high-quality, trustworthy data products. This is an exciting chance to genuinely help modernise and optimise how genomic data is processed and delivered - with real-world impact.

What you’ll be doing:

• Designing, building and optimising data pipelines and processing systems
• Working with clinical and genomic data at scale - from acquisition through to transformation, lineage, metadata capture and de-identification
• Confidently using tools like Tableau, Semarchy, Prefect, Aspera and Globus for orchestration, visualisation and secure data transfer
• Supporting teams with robust, well-documented data models and infrastructure
• Building in AWS (cloud-first), and using best practices across storage, compute, and orchestration
• Enabling standards in data quality, observability, testing and automation
• Collaborating with product, QA, architecture and engineering teams to build cleanly integrated data services
• Contributing to the development of machine learning and visualisation capabilities
• Helping raise data engineering capability across the chapter and wider organisation

What you’ll bring:

• Strong experience building data pipelines and large-scale processing systems (ETL/ELT)
• Solid hands-on experience with AWS and cloud-first data engineering
• Excellent knowledge of tools like Tableau, Aspera, Semarchy, Prefect and/or Globus
• Strong coding skills (Python preferred), plus experience with CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code
• Proven skills in data visualisation and statistical analysis, with the ability to communicate insights clearly and effectively
• A good understanding of data governance, data modelling and working in regulated environments
• Solid grasp of security, performance and compliance considerations in sensitive data systems

Bonus if you have:

• Experience working with genomic or bioinformatics data
• Knowledge of machine learning pipelines and productionising ML models
• Background in life sciences, healthcare or public sector tech delivery
• Familiarity with healthcare data standards (e.g. OMOP, FHIR, SNOMED, ICD-10)

This really is an amazing time to join our team - we’re growing, refining how we work with data, and laying the foundations for the next wave of clinical and research innovation.

So, if you’re ready to apply your strong Data skills and passion to something that really matters, we’d love to hear from you!

Qualifications

Ideally, a master’s degree or equivalent experience working in data, biostatistics, informatics or data analysis or engineering.  

Additional Information

Salary from: £73,000

Closing Date: Sunday 27th July at 23:00 (UK time)

Being an integral part of such a meaningful mission is extremely rewarding in itself, but in order to support our people, we’re continually improving our benefits package. We pride ourselves on investing in our people and supporting them to achieve their career goals, as well as offering a benefits package including: 

• Generous Leave: 30 days’ holiday plus bank holidays, additional leave for long service, and the option to apply for up to 30 days of remote working abroad annually (approval required).
• Family-Friendly: Blended working arrangements, flexible working, enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave benefits.
• Pension & Financial: Defined contribution pension (Genomics England double-matches up to 10%, however you can contribute more if you wish), Life Assurance (3x salary), and a Give As You Earn scheme.
• Learning & Development: Individual learning budgets, support for training and certifications, and reimbursement for one annual professional subscription (approval required).
• Recognition & Rewards: Employee recognition programme and referral scheme.
• Health & Wellbeing: Subsidised gym membership, a free Headspace account, and access to an Employee Assistance Programme, eye tests, flu jabs.

Equal opportunities and our commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace 

Genomics England is actively committed to providing and supporting an inclusive environment that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion best practice both within our community and in any other area where we have influence. We are proud of our diverse community where everyone can come to work and feel welcomed and treated with respect regardless of any disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, or social background. 

Genomics England’s policies of non-discrimination and equity and will be applied fairly to all people, regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, being pregnant or recently becoming a parent, race, religion or beliefs, sex or sexual orientation, length of service, whether full or part-time or employed under a permanent or a fixed-term contract or any other relevant factor.  

Genomics England does not tolerate any form of discrimination, harassment, victimisation or bullying at work. Such behaviour is contrary to our virtues, undermines our mission and core values and diminishes the dignity, respect and integrity of all parties.  Our People policies outline our commitment to inclusivity. 

We aim to remove barriers in our recruitment processes and to be flexible with our interview processes. Should you require any adjustments that may help you to fully participate in the recruitment process, we encourage you to discuss this with us. 

Blended working model

Genomics England operates a blended working model as we know our people appreciate the flexibility that hybrid working can bring. We expect most people to come into the office a minimum of 2 times each month. However, this will vary according to role and will be agreed with your team leader. There is no expectation that people will return to the office full time unless they want to, however, some of our roles require full time on site attendance e.g., lab teams, reception team. 

Our teams and squads have, and will continue to reflect on what works best for them to work together successfully and have the freedom to design working patterns to suit, beyond the minimum. Our office locations are: Canary Wharf, Cambridge and Leeds.

Onboarding background checks

As part of our recruitment process, all successful candidates are subject to a Standard Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.  We therefore require applicants to disclose any previous offences at point of application, as some unspent convictions may mean we are unable to proceed with your application due to the nature of our work in healthcare.