Senior Developer in Norwich

The Earlham Institute is seeking a versatile full-stack Research Software Engineer (RSE) to join the team behind COPO (Collaborative OPen Omics). COPO is a production-deployed metadata and data-brokering platform that has been developed and operated at the Institute since 2015. COPO underpins some of the largest biodiversity genomics programmes attempted to date, having brokered more than 80,000 samples from over 4,800 species to public repositories such as the European Nucleotide Archive, with automated validation, expert curation and full audit trails.

The successful candidate will join the small engineering team that builds and operates COPO, contributing across the full stack — frontend interfaces, APIs, and the services that connect them to the platform's validation, curation and submission pipelines. Data visualisation, dashboards and API design will be at the centre of the role, but the post is deliberately broad: COPO supports a range of research communities and projects, and the work varies with the needs of those the platform serves.

This is a broadly scoped full-stack role with metadata validation, translation, visualisation and API design as its primary focus. It suits an engineer who enjoys turning complex scientific data into clear, reliable, well-documented interfaces that researchers and the wider community can depend on. Being a senior, hands-on role, you will own significant components of the project end to end, make day-to-day architectural decisions, and drive delivery to time.

Main Activities & Responsibilities

• Design, build and maintain interactive dashboards and public data portals, from data model through to production deployment.
• Translate complex, multi-source scientific metadata into clear, accurate and accessible visualisations.
• Build reporting and summary views that are reproducible and auditable, including snapshots for governance and reporting.
• Apply good practice in accessibility, responsive design and information design so that outputs are usable by researchers and the public alike.
• Develop, document and maintain RESTful APIs that expose metadata in multiple formats for internal tools and external consumers.
• Integrate frontend and portal services with COPO's validation, curation and submission pipelines.
• Ensure APIs are performant, versioned, secure and well documented so third parties can build against them with minimal support.
• Contribute across the COPO codebase: frontend, backend and supporting services as a flexible member of a small engineering team.
• Write clean, tested, maintainable code with appropriate use of version control, code review, CI/CD and containerisation (Git, Docker).
• Help deploy and operate COPO instances, working with colleagues on deployment, monitoring, backup and reliability.
• Work closely with the technical lead and engineering colleagues to extend the platform and its metadata standards.
• Help add support for new data types and metadata schemas, and reflect these in the interfaces and APIs you build.
• Support research users onboarding onto the platform, including documentation, tutorials and responsive help.
• Produce clear technical documentation and contribute to open-source releases under permissive licences.

Person Profile

• Degree (or equivalent professional/practical experience) in computer science, software engineering, bioinformatics or a related discipline.
• Proficiency with version control (Git) and collaborative development workflows, including code review.
• Understanding of FAIR data principles, ontologies or controlled vocabularies.
• An understanding of, and willingness to apply, good engineering practice: automated testing, clear documentation and basic security awareness.
• Able to translate complex requirements into clear, usable interfaces, with strong attention to accuracy and detail.
• Familiarity with cloud or research-computing infrastructure.
• Demonstrable experience building and maintaining full-stack web applications in JavaScript and a backend language (Python preferred).
• Experience designing, building and documenting RESTful APIs.
• Experience with containerisation and deployment (Docker; CI/CD pipelines).
• Experience designing and building data visualisations or dashboards, using libraries such as Plotly, D3, or equivalent.
• Experience working with structured or scientific data, metadata standards, or data-intensive systems.
• Experience mentoring, coaching or line-managing other developers.

Additional Requirements

• Promotes equality and values diversity.
• Attention to detail.
• Willingness to embrace the expected values and behaviours of all staff at the Institute, ensuring it is a great place to work.
• Able to present a positive image of self and the Institute, promoting both the international reputation and public engagement aims of the Institute.
• Willingness to work outside standard working hours when required.
• Ability to maintain confidentiality and security of information where appropriate.

The closing date for applications will be 5 August 2026.