Data Scientist (1-year fixed-term contract) in London

About The Role

Portal is seeking a motivated Data Scientist to join our Bioinformatics & Machine Learning team. This 1‑year, fixed‑term role will involve working directly with the wet lab to apply statistical and machine learning techniques, invent new applications of Portal's single‑molecule proteomics platform, and span the full range from exploratory data analyses to shipping production‑hardened methods. The work is embedded in a fast‑moving, highly collaborative research environment at the scientific frontier of the field and is ideal for someone excited by novel methodological challenges and comfortable in rapidly evolving, often ambiguous problem spaces.

Responsibilities

• Research, develop, and ship analytical pipelines for nanopore‑based proteomic data
• Design and implement statistical and machine learning approaches to novel biological data, iterating from exploratory analysis through to deployable pipeline components
• Robustly evaluate and benchmark algorithmic approaches, documenting findings clearly
• Liaise with experimental scientists and engineers to understand data characteristics, interpret results, and align on deliverables
• Present analytical results and methodological decisions to multidisciplinary audiences, including non‑technical stakeholders and clients
• Contribute to a culture of scientific rigor, reproducibility, and code quality within the team and across the company

Qualifications Experience & Requirements

Technical

• Master's degree or higher in Bioinformatics, Statistics, Machine Learning, or a related field
• Strong theoretical grounding in statistics and machine learning, with the ability to apply it in biological contexts
• Solid command of data‑science best practices: major Python libraries, experimentation workflows, Git version control, and the ability to read and reuse code from existing projects
• Demonstrated data‑engineering fundamentals, including handling messy data, applying robust cleaning and validation practices, and exercising good judgement as data complexity increases
• Realistic view on the use of AI tools in day‑to‑day technical work, recognizing where they add value and where they do not
• Ability to ship code from analysis notebooks to robust, reusable pipeline components
• Familiarity with experiment‑tracking tools, shared compute environments, and/or cloud platforms

Behavioural

• Demonstrates strong scientific curiosity and a data‑hunter mindset; asks clarifying questions and navigates complex, ambiguous, and under‑specified problems
• Works effectively across experimental, engineering, and commercial functions, explaining complex technical work to non‑specialist audiences
• Strong collaborator, outward‑looking, market‑aware mindset, articulating technical value in terms of customer and business impact

Desirable

• Theoretical background in molecular biology or protein biochemistry, including foundational understanding of proteomics‑related concepts
• Hands‑on experience developing data science pipelines for omics or other complex biological data, and familiarity with relevant data standards and formats
• Experience with unsupervised or semi‑supervised learning, Bayesian modelling, or time‑series data
• Experience or interest in single‑molecule or electrophysiology data
• Demonstrated ability to learn new biological domains, data modalities, or analytical techniques quickly and effectively

We offer a competitive salary and benefits package. If you are passionate about developing cutting‑edge scientific tools and want to contribute to breakthrough innovations in proteomics, we encourage you to apply. This is a 1‑year fixed‑term position and requires candidates to have full, unrestricted, and immediate right to work in the UK.