Bioinformatician

Job description

Job Title: Bioinformatician
Salary: Competitive with bonus, and benefits package
Location: Colworth Science Park, UK

Business Context and Main Purpose of the Job

The role sits within Unilever's Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre (SEAC), which is responsible for carrying out safety assessments of all Unilever products. The role primarily involves the provision of scientific expertise across the fields of informatics, mathematical modelling, bioinformatics, chemi-informatics and systems biology in helping to derive innovative approaches in both our current and new risk assessment methods.

You will be required to work with a range of scientific experts of different disciplines, including biologists, toxicologists, eco-toxicologists, computational chemists and mathematical modellers. You will need to be able to communicate effectively with stakeholders.

Main Accountabilities

Delivery of accurate and high-quality data analysis and computational support according to agreed project goals and timescales.

Defining the appropriate approach and methodology for manipulation, analysis and interpretation of data and ensuring that the analysis is of high quality in collaboration with colleagues.

Actively seeking novel and leading-edge methodology in relevant computational fields that could enhance delivery of non-animal risk assessment approaches and integrate within project deliverables.

Working closely with other scientists across SEAC and Unilever providing expert scientific advice on computational approaches that would be of value.

Contribute to the development of training to both expert and non-expert users to ensure novel approaches are embedded within the organisation.

Working closely with external suppliers and experts in the informatics field.

Contribute to designated SEAC projects or activities.

Joint responsibility for the design, development and dissemination of user-friendly tools, workflows and databases to a wide group of scientists within SEAC and wider Unilever R&D.

Essential Skills, Experience and Qualifications

Strong problem-solving capability and ability to work autonomously

Strong technical background with demonstrated programming skills in at least two of the following: Perl, Python, R, Java, PHP, SQL

Relevant degree in bioinformatics or computational biology or equivalent with professional experience in this area

Expertise in high content data analysis

Experience with RNAseq datasets

Experience with handling transcriptomics data sets

Experience and expertise with genome alignment, mapping, variant calling, differential expression, annotation, expression profiling and handling omics scale data sets

Background in statistical analysis and/or application of mathematical techniques

Strong communication skills

Ability to work well in teams

Ability to communicate complex concepts to a non-expert audience

Desirable Skills and Experience

Experience of applying text analytics techniques to create automated data preparation, exploration, extraction and visualisation of unstructured information

Understanding of data mining techniques including statistical modelling methods, time series, text mining, optimization and/or information search and retrieval

Demonstrable experience of working with standard bioinformatics tools and databases (e.g. ChEMBL, ArrayExpress, KEGG, Taverna, Pipeline Pilot, Cytoscape etc)

Experience in database design and handling/accessing diverse biology/chemistry datasets & databases

Experience of high-performance computing

Experience of working in multidisciplinary teams on research problems

Experience in creating scripts to mine and integrate data from external sources

Familiar with machine learning approaches

Familiar with relational and non-relational databases

Familiar with LINUX environment and basic systems administration

Closing date April 4th 2019