Bioinformatician - Plant Genomics

Job Title:

Bioinformatician – Plant Genomics

Location:

Oxfordshire (Hybrid – minimum 3 days onsite per week)

Salary:

£50,000 – £60,000

Benefits

• Training and development opportunities
• Exposure to cutting-edge science and innovation
• Regular company socials
• Team meals: Monday breakfast and Friday lunch
• Flexible and hybrid working
• Group life cover (3x base salary)
• Pension scheme
• Private medical insurance

About the Company

Our client is biotech start-up based in Oxfordshire, spun out from a leading UK university. The company is on a mission to radically enhance crops by applying wild plant genetics to boost yields and support sustainable farming. With a proprietary genomics platform and a focus on innovation, they’re creating impactful solutions for growers, consumers, and the planet.

Overview

The company is seeking a skilled and motivated Bioinformatician in Plant Genomics to join their Trait Design Team. You will use large-scale -omic datasets to uncover functional genetic insights that support the development of high-performance crops. The role is ideal for someone with strong experience in bioinformatics and a passion for sustainability and agriculture.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and lead NGS analysis pipelines, including de novo transcriptome assembly for non-model plant species
• Curate, integrate, and analyse large-scale -omic datasets from internal and public sources
• Identify and characterise novel genetic elements (e.g. genes, alleles, regulatory DNA) for enhanced crop traits
• Conduct comparative genomics and evolutionary analysis to uncover valuable diversity
• Collaborate closely with experimental biology teams to co-design and interpret data-driven experiments

Requirements

• PhD or equivalent experience in bioinformatics, computational biology, genomics, or a related field
• Demonstrated expertise in at least one of the following:
• De novo transcriptome assembly
• Mining genomic data for regulatory DNA
• Application of ML/AI in genomics
• Strong experience with multi-omic data integration and analysis
• Proficiency in Python and working within Linux/Unix environments
• Familiarity with Git/Github and workflow tools such as Snakemake or Nextflow
• Experience in plant science or working with non-model species is advantageous