Lead Engineer (Production Bioinformatics & ML Platform)

The Role

We are looking for a **Lead Engineer** to lead, technically, the team that builds and runs our **commercial software platform** : the production system that runs our R\&D team's **bioinformatic pipelines** (mostly **Nextflow** ) and **machine-learning models** at high volume, every day, for the clinical genetic tests our customers rely on. Your team makes these pipelines reliable, scalable, traceable and fast in production, and keeps them that way as the load grows.

The platform sits **between R\&D and IT** . You will not manage either team, yet much of your work depends on both, so the role needs **strong architectural judgement** and the **people skills** to move work forward through influence rather than authority.

**This is a hands-on technical leadership role.** You will set the platform's technical direction and make its key technical decisions --- designing it to absorb growing volumes, new tests and new models without being rebuilt --- while doing a real share of the technical work yourself.

What You Will Do

* **Set the technical direction** --- define where the platform should be in two to three years and the roadmap to get there; make the architecture, technology and build-versus-buy decisions.
* **Stay hands-on** --- write production code, prototype and benchmark design options, review infrastructure and pipeline code, and lead the investigation of the hardest production incidents.
* **Design for heavy and growing load** --- workflow orchestration and scheduling, compute capacity, storage and movement of large sequencing files, and predictable turnaround times.
* **Bring pipelines and models into production** --- packaging, containerisation, versioning, validation, release and rollback, so that new and updated tests ship quickly and safely.
* **Keep the system running smoothly** --- monitoring, alerting, incident response and capacity planning; set and meet service levels for availability and turnaround time.
* **Build in clinical-grade quality** --- every result reproducible and traceable to the exact pipeline, model, reference data and software version that produced it; patient data protected; audit and regulatory requirements supported.
* **Lead the team technically** --- make and explain the key decisions, break the roadmap into deliverable work, guide engineers through design and code review, and set engineering standards, including that AI-generated code is reviewed and owned like any other.
* **Work across R\&D and IT** --- agree with R\&D what a production-ready pipeline looks like; plan infrastructure, storage and security with IT; resolve competing priorities through clear proposals and data; and explain technical risks and trade-offs to management.
* **Integrate with international partners** --- work with partner teams around the world to integrate our solutions with their platforms: agree interfaces and data exchange, deploy into partner environments, and troubleshoot jointly across organizations.

What We're Looking For

* **Substantial experience building and running production software systems** --- typically eight or more years --- including **several years as the technical lead of a team** while staying hands-on.
* **A proven track record as an architect** of systems that handle heavy and growing load in production.
* **Excellent people skills** --- delivering through teams you do not manage: negotiating priorities, resolving disagreements and building trust.
* **Clear communication in fluent English**, in writing and in person, with executives, scientists, engineers and international partners alike.
* **Strategic thinking and sound judgement** --- seeing where the system must go and getting there in safe steps, in a setting where results inform patient care.
* A degree in computer science, software engineering, bioinformatics or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Core Technical Skills

Hands-on experience with **workflow orchestration** and with **Slurm and/or cloud infrastructure** is required. Across the other areas we expect solid ability in most and real depth in several:

* **Workflow orchestration** --- how orchestration works (task graphs, scheduling, resource requests, data staging, retries, caching) and hands-on use of at least one framework: Nextflow, Snakemake, WDL/Cromwell, Airflow, Argo or Temporal. Our pipelines are written in Nextflow; if it is new to you, be ready to learn it.
* **Compute infrastructure** --- Slurm (or another HPC scheduler) and/or AWS, GCP or Azure, including running large batch workloads.
* **Programming** --- Go, which parts of our platform are written in, and, Python, plus Bash and SQL. Strong engineers from another back-end language are welcome if ready to pick up Go quickly.
* **Software architecture** --- distributed systems, APIs, queue- and event-driven processing, fault tolerance and horizontal scaling.
* **Containers and Linux** --- Docker, Kubernetes, Linux administration, networking, storage (including object storage such as S3 or MinIO) and performance profiling.
* **DevOps and reliability** --- Git, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, monitoring, and logging.
* **Data and ML in production** --- relational databases and message brokers (e.g. PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Kafka); packaging, versioning and batch inference of models.
* **Security** --- access control, secrets management, encryption and secure handling of patient data.

Nice to Have

* **Hands-on Nextflow** --- running pipelines in production, ideally writing and optimising them (DSL2, nf-core).
* **Bioinformatics or NGS data** --- FASTQ/BAM/VCF and tools such as BWA, samtools or GATK.
* **Both HPC and cloud**, hybrid on-premise and cloud architectures, moving very large files over constrained networks, and infrastructure cost control.

What We Offer

* **Real ownership** of the technical direction of a production system at the heart of the business.
* **Meaningful work**: the systems you build deliver results that improve patients' healthcare.
* Close collaboration with a **strong, publication-active R\&D team** in an international company.
* A competitive compensation package, including private health insurance.
* Flexible working hours and a partial work-from-home option (upon approval).