Bioinformatician

Job title: Bioinformatician

Reports to: Bioinformatics Team Leader

Location: Manchester (hybrid role) – 3 days in the Manchester office / 2 days working from home

Contract Type: Full-time, Permanent

Salary & Benefits: Competitive Salary + Benefits Package

About Yourgene Health:

Yourgene Health is a leading integrated technologies and services business, enabling the delivery of genomic medicine. The group works in partnership with global leaders in DNA technology to advance diagnostic science.

Yourgene primarily develops, manufactures, and commercialises simple and accurate molecular diagnostic solutions, for reproductive health, precision medicine and infectious diseases. The Group\’s flagship in vitro diagnostic products include non -invasive prenatal tests (NIPT) for Down\’s Syndrome and other genetic disorders, Cystic Fibrosis screening tests, invasive rapid aneuploidy tests and DPYD genotyping.

Yourgene has a range of innovative DNA sample preparation platforms, powered by Ranger® Technology, the Yourgene LightBench® and Yourgene QS250, ideal for cell free DNA applications in NIPT and oncology including liquid biopsy.

Yourgene also has a global laboratory service network equipped to be a full life-cycle partner for clinical, research and pharmaceutical organisations to support partners at the preclinical, clinical, and post market stage to develop, manufacture, obtain regulatory approval and commercialise new products and services. In addition, Yourgene offers and NIPT and high throughput Covid testing service.

Yourgene Health is headquartered in Manchester, UK with facilities in Taipei, Singapore, the US and Canada.

Our Culture:

Yourgene is a growing, vibrant and exciting place to work, we are looking for committed driven individuals to be part of our next growth journey. Our culture is described by our employee\’s as collegiate, friendly, professional, innovative, open and fast paced. We have nay social and well-being initiatives run by our Social Huddle that keep our sense of community alive during challenging times that the pandemic has thrown our way. At Yourgene we focus on putting values led programmes in place to ensure that we can attract, retain and develop our people. We want our people to have a career with Yourgene and we ensure that they are recognised and rewarded for their achievements and commitment, everyone plays a critical role in our growth journey.

Description of role:

We have an opportunity to join our Bioinformatics and Software Development team as a Bioinformatician working across the Novacyt group of companies to design, develop and maintain the company’s assays which utilise a range of PCR-based and sequencing technologies. As a Bioinformatician, you will design assays and tests across our full portfolio including reproductive health, precision medicine and infectious disease products. You will carry out surveillance of our infectious disease assays against the latest genetic databases ensuring that our products continue to detect all emerging variants as they arise. You will analyse data sets to support the lab teams developing state of the art assays.

You will work closely with the research and development team to make product ideas into high performing assays used across our customer base which includes clinical, veterinary, environmental testing and research customers. Whether working on a research use only or regulated assay, you will ensure that our product design and maintenance meets our ISO13485 and ISO9001 quality management system requirements.

You will have a background in bioinformatics and genomics combined with experience of programming in Python or a similar language, with a demonstrated ability to work independently and as part of a team by communicating clearly and delivering timely results.

Overall responsibility:

To use bioinformatics tools and databases to design new assays and monitor their ongoing performance against sequence databases. Ensure that the assays and tools that the company provides meet the expected standards of performance and carry out any required regulatory reporting on the company’s assays and tests.

Key areas of responsibility:

• Design PCR assays using a range of PCR chemistries including ARMS PCR, QF PCR, Taqman, HyBeacon, High resolution melt.
• Design NGS assays using amplicon and hybrid capture technologies.
• Curate sequence data and periodically mine public databases for sequence content.
• Contribute to the surveillance of infectious disease assays.
• Use bioinformatics tools to assess the performance of assays and analyse large datasets.
• Assist with the maintenance and running of bioinformatics pipelines for the analysis of NGS data.
• Keep up to date with new technologies to improve the design process and enable new product development.
• Work on multiple work packages, providing regular progress reports and delivering timely results.
• Assist in the data analysis and report writing of development studies, ensuring compliance with all applicable regulatory standards.
• Ensure the completion of research-related documentation (including technical summaries) in line with an ISO13485 and ISO9001 quality management system.

Qualifications, Skills and Abilities:

Essential

• BSc in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, or Genomics .
• Must have experience in and understanding of design principles for a range of PCR and QPCR assays.
• Experience in coding in at least one language (Python strongly preferred).
• Proficient with bioinformatics analysis tools: multiple sequence alignment, BLAST analysis, open reading frame analysis, etc.
• An understanding of NGS sequencing and bioinformatics tools use for analysis of the data.
• Understanding of the biology behind genotyping, gene expression profiling, comparative genomics and genetic mapping.
• Experience in using public databases for genomic sequences.
• The ability to work well within a team and have strong written and verbal communication skills is critical.
• Excellent organizational skills and outstanding attention to detail are required for this role.

Desirable

• Experience with performing PCR, QPCR or NGS in a lab environment.
• Expertise in sequence analysis tools for mapping and comparative genomics.
• Experience of working in industry, developing molecular diagnostic assays .
• Experience of working within a quality system in a regulated environment is highly advantageous, particularly ISO15189, ISO13485 and ISO9001.
• Previous experience in scientific product development.
• Experience in analysis of both long read and short read NGS sequence data.

Closing Date:

Sunday 16th February, 2025

Yourgene Health is committed to encouraging equality, diversity and inclusion among our workforce. The aim is for our workforce to be truly representative of all sections of society and for each employee to feel respected and able to give their best.