Bioinformatician - Generative Biology Institute

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society.

Welcome to the Generative Biology Institute

Led by Founding Director Jason Chin, the Generative Biology Institute (GBI) at the Ellison Institute of Technology is tackling the key challenges in making biology engineerable, thereby unlocking the unrivalled power of biology for the benefit of humanity.

The vision of the GBI is to lay the foundations for engineering biology and to unlock its potential for good. To achieve this, we must overcome two key challenges. First, we need the ability to write in the natural language of biology, enabling the rapid and scalable synthesis of entire genomes with precision. Second, we must understand what to write - determining which DNA sequences will generate biological systems that perform the desired functions. Addressing these challenges will allow us to harness the full power of biology to create transformative solutions across health, agriculture, clean energy, and more.

GBI will have sustained and substantial funding to support the unique scale and ambition of its ground-breaking vision for engineering biology. GBI researchers will also be supported by cutting-edge technology hubs including mass spectrometry, flow cytometry, sequencing, automation, imaging, and bioprocessing. GBI will also have access to substantial compute resources that can be leveraged to further accelerate progress, including scientific compute, bioinformatics, and machine learning. The environment at GBI will allow researchers to undertake ambitious, long-term, collaborative research, and we will actively support the translation of research to commercial applications, where appropriate.

The Generative Biology Institute commenced operations in 2025, occupying newly renovated bespoke space in the Oxford Science Park. The team will later move to a purpose-made facility in the Oxford Science Park, currently under construction. Once complete, this state-of-the-art facility will include more than 40,000 m² of research laboratory and office space. It will house over 30 groups and up to 600 employees at scale, focused on solving the two critical challenges in making biology engineerable and applying the solutions to addressing the global challenges encapsulated in EIT’s Humane Endeavors.

Your Role

The Bioinformatics Tech Hub within the GBI is seeking a Bioinformatician to help deliver the collaborative, high-quality science of the Institute.

We do not expect candidates to have deep experience in every area listed in this description; instead, we are looking for a strong scientific mindset - someone who can understand research needs, communicate clearly with multidisciplinary teams, learn unfamiliar technologies quickly, and help deliver reproducible and scalable research. We are interested in receiving applications from individuals with backgrounds that will help diversify the skills and knowledge available within the Tech Hub.

Joining the existing Bioinformatics team, the post holder will have the opportunity to integrate with and help develop the science of the Institute. This role is particularly suited to someone who enjoys working across domains, learning new tools and skills, and collaborating closely with researchers and other Tech Hub staff, especially within Scientific Computing and AI/ML.

Key Responsibilities

• To provide data analysis and interpretation for GBI researchers, assisting, where required, in manuscript preparation and submission.
• To participate in developing and implementing bioinformatics strategies, programs, and workflows that support the experimental programmes of GBI, including synthetic biology, genome design, and molecular evolution across microbial, mammalian, and plant biology applications.
• To ensure reproducibility, version control, and documentation for all analyses and pipelines, contributing to open science and collaborative research.
• To organise and prioritise work, operating at the highest standard to defined deadlines.
• To ensure compliance with best practices in biological data handling, ensuring effective integration of biological data with laboratory and experimental metadata.
• To assist in the design and delivery of high-quality training to GBI staff and researchers.
• To support strategies for effective and timely user engagement, including user-group meetings, seminars, and chat systems.
• To use strategic learning opportunities to develop and broaden expertise – personally, and as part of efforts to ensure resilience within the group.
• To promote and champion EIT and the work of the GBI, representing the institute at functions and public events.

Requirements

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• An advanced degree in a data-oriented scientific discipline (e.g. Bioinformatics, Medical Informatics, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Biological Sciences).
• Experience delivering bioinformatics analyses in a client-facing or collaborative capacity, with strong knowledge of common tasks in genomics and transcriptomics and/or in proteomics/metabolomics, image analysis, crystallography/protein design, etc.
• An appreciation, or experience, of working within a laboratory or scientific research setting; an understanding of the data types, limitations, and challenges across experimental workflows, and of relevant techniques in molecular biology upstream of data generation.
• Demonstrable programming and scripting skills (Python and/or R, bash).
• Familiarity operating within Linux environments, including operating within HPC and/or cloud environments (e.g. SLURM, OCI).
• Experience running and fault-finding analysis pipelines (e.g. Nextflow), especially utilising software containers (e.g. Docker, Singularity/Apptainer).
• Experience using and developing version-controlled codebases, familiarity with common tools (git) and development practices.
• Strong verbal and written communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to translate and communicate technical solutions to a range of audiences.

Benefits

Our Benefits:

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

Working Together – What It Involves:

• ·You must have the right to work permanently in the UK with a willingness to travel as necessary. In certain cases, we can consider sponsorship, and this will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
• You will live in, or within easy commuting distance of, Oxford (or be willing to relocate).