Research Software Engineer - Cambridge, United Kingdom - Wellcome Sanger Institute

Wellcome Sanger Institute
Wellcome Sanger Institute
Verified Company
Cambridge, United Kingdom

1 month ago

Tom O´Connor

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Tom O´Connor

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Description

Do you want to help us improve human health and understand life on Earth? Make your mark by shaping the future to enable or deliver life-changing science to solve some of humanity's greatest challenges.


We are seeking a couple of enthusiastic and collaborative
Research Software Engineer's (RSE) to provide research software and engineering support to Wellcome Sanger Institute world leading informatics research teams and programs on a 12 months Fixed Term Contract.


About the role:

Research Software Engineers are critical to the impact of HPC (high-performance compute), data science, and the larger scientific community.


You will actively be supporting research and informatics teams across projects that will often push the boundaries of scalability, by coaxing the best out of the software, platform and Linux operating system and development processes available.


You will be working within the Sanger Informatics Support Team, which is responsible for the design, management and development of Sanger's HPC environments, data archive, and award winning private cloud environment.

This role will involve working closely across research programs often embedding within them fostering co-creation opportunities.

Your role will often involve embedding within programs and working across teams to help support:

  • New developments
  • Support software optimisation
  • Enhance the art of what is possible
  • Provide training regarding best practice where appropriate
  • Act as an ambassador for HPC and at scale computing in the research community
  • And helping our platform research team develop and architect tomorrow's solutions to support research endeavours.
Our team makes strong use of DevOps practices, including CI/CD and containerisation.

We support a wide range of hardware and make excellent use development platforms to ensure a constant high standard of service and software delivery.

We make use of git/gitlab, gitflow and Ansible to manage and deploy systems at scale in an effective and reproducible manner.


We can provide:

As with any IT centric environment, the only constant is change. We will be happy to help you develop both into this role and into the future.


In particular we can offer:

  • New opportunities to enhance your understanding of at scale computing
  • Training in house to support team engagement with at scale research platforms.
  • Training and mentoring to skill up
  • ITIL training, to help engage with the wider IT communities
  • Informatics training and assistance to bring you up to speed in this exciting and dynamic environment.
  • The opportunity to engage with world leading vendors and communities
  • Our team has a wellestablished mentoring approach to team development who will be happy to onboard you and get you up to speed.

About you:

You will be a key team player with an enthusiastic and engaged outlook. You will be happy to take on new challenges and helping teams to realise the value from their data.

While we are mostly Python based, this role will provide new and engaging opportunities to hone your coding, development and debugging skills across multiple platforms and languages.

You will bring a firm understanding of Linux, its operation, its tools and administration. You will be joining a team that embraces its inner geek and sharing knowledge.

For some teams, their work will be private or public cloud based, for others more traditional HPC, ML/AI based.

This role will enable you to engage with many of the leading and developing technologies, required to accelerate research and provide new opportunities for our scientific and informatics programs.

This role will involve working with industry leading vendors and engaging with briefings to remain at the forefront of what is possible.


As a key co-creation developer, you may take the lead in complex technical challenges and some project management experience would be beneficial but this is not essential and training can be provided.


Where we co-develop or develop solutions, your assistance and willingness to submit posters, contribute to white papers or present to conferences would be highly valued.


About us:


You will work as part of the Informatics Support team which is part of a broader Informatics and Digital Solutions (IDS) unit, which includes platform and system designers and developers, storage, HPC, architecture, database and service management specialists, in a balanced waterfall and DevOps / Agile delivery environment.

As a group of solution developers, we work in a team-oriented manner taking the best from current computing practices. By deploying our skills in software development and integrating existing solutions, we co-create value with our stakeholders. We maintain frequent conversations with users, building relationships and confidence.

We aren't afraid of rapid change in our tools to keep up with the evolution of the research that drives the development of our solutions.


Essential Technical skills:


  • Educated to degree level or equivalent industry experience
  • A good working understanding of DevOps processes
  • The ability to provide good quality code in a consistent manner, Python, Bash in particular and low level language knowledge would be desirable
  • An understanding of CI/CD and git code version management, e.g. gitflow
  • A demonstrable linux foundation
  • Experience and an understanding of HPC
  • An understanding of software development lifecycle

Competencies and Behaviours:


  • An ability to communicate effectively and collaborate on projects
  • A demonstrable enthusiasm for technical challenges
  • Works closely with team members to engage and support projects and workflows as required.
  • Proven ability to propose technical solutions and solve potentially challenging technical problems.
  • A can do will do attitude
  • Eager to take on new and often exciting challenges
  • Ability to assist with knowledge transfer
  • An interest in mentoring others
  • Able to assist with the coprioritise workloads and solution delivery with various teams

Application Process:


Please describe in your Covering letter your drive to work in a research institute, aptitude to working in a team and your willingness to learn new technologies and methodologies.


Other Information:

We operate a hybrid working pattern with 2 days in the office and the rest working from home.

RSEs can fulfil the majority of their roles working from home, and we are very supportive in getting the equipment and access you will need to make the best of your career at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

You should expect questions at the interview around your ability and potential to work in this hybrid manner.

You should expect your aptitude, programming and testing skills to be tested during the interview process.


Salary range:
£47,643 to £53,000 (depending on experience)


Contract Type: 12 months Fixed Term Contract


Closing Date: 26th November 2023


Working at Wellcome Sanger:

Our flexible-hybrid working environment is designed to support a healthy work-life balance.

This means you can work flexibly with a combination of working from home, and working from our Campus to allow you to focus on being productive and part of the team while enjoying the benefits of working flexibly.


We aim to attract, recruit, retain and develop talent from the widest possible talent pool, thereby gaining insight and access to different markets to generate a greater impact on the world.

We have a supportive culture with the following staff networks, LGBTQ+, Parents and Carers and Race Equity to bring people together to share experiences, offer specific support and development opportunities and raise awareness.

The networks are also a place for allies to provide support to others.


We want our people to be whoever they want to be because we believe people who bring their best selves to work, do their best work.

That's why we're committed to creating a truly inclusive culture at Sanger Institute.

We will consider all individuals without discrimination and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees, where everyone can thrive.


Our Benefits:

We are proud to deliver an awarding campus-wide employee wellbeing strategy and programme.

The importance of good health and adopting a healthier lifestyle and the commitment to reduce work-related stress is strongly acknowledged and recognised at Sanger Institute.

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