Job Description

Join us as a Bioinformatician and make an invaluable contribution to our Food Safety & Biosecurity!
This is an exciting opportunity to join a growing, multidisciplinary team of molecular biologists and bioinformaticians working at the forefront of crop health, food safety, and environmental science. You will contribute to both production service delivery for public? and private?sector customers, as well as innovative R&D projects. As a bioinformatician, you will work primarily with high?throughput DNA sequence data from Illumina and Oxford Nanopore Technologies platforms, supporting applications such as metabarcoding, genomics, metagenomics, and transcriptomics. Your work will help develop and deploy new approaches in areas including crop protection and pathology, soil health, invasive species, food safety, food authenticity, and wider environmental applications.
What you'll be doing:

• Performing bioinformatics analysis in a broad range of applications and projects.
• Evaluation and implementation of bioinformatics methodology and software.
• Development of new bioinformatics analysis approaches.
• Development and maintenance of bioinformatics pipelines.
• Writing technical documentation on the postholder's activities listed above.
• Contributions to project reports and manuscripts.
• Attending customer-facing meetings alongside Fera colleagues, on occasions.
• Attending internal and external conferences/seminars, with the opportunity to present as appropriate.
• There will be the opportunity to suggest and contribute to new project proposals, and eventually to lead projects.

What we're looking for:

• An MSc or higher in biology, computer science, maths, statistics, bioinformatics or other relevant subject.
• Experience in the analysis of DNA sequence data, preferably including high throughput sequencing platforms in applications such as metabarcoding, genomics, metagenomics, transcriptomics.
• A sound understanding of the molecular biology fundamentals of DNA, RNA, genes, genomes.
• General knowledge of principles of common DNA sequencing platforms and the data outputs for each.
• Proven experience in Linux/UNIX, Bash.
• Proven experience in at least one of R, Python or Perl with experience in a second.
• Ability to write clear documentation of analyses planned and performed, and of development work, in accordance with defined procedures and guidelines.
• Ability to plan work and work to deadlines.
• Ability to work collaboratively with colleagues in a multidisciplinary team.
• Keen interest in applying bioinformatics skills to a variety of production and research areas in crop health, soil health, food safety, environmental science.
• A keen interest in learning new technical skills and relevant scientific knowledge.

What's in it for you?

• ?Salary: 31,170
• 25 days' holiday (rising to 29) with the opportunity to buy & sell extra leave.
• Flexible working hours, on-site gym, restaurant, and free parking
• The opportunity to take a paid day out of the office, volunteering for our charity partners or a cause of your choice
• Company matched pension, life assurance, a cycle2work scheme, 15 weeks' fully paid maternity, adoption and shared parental leave, paternity pay of two weeks...and plenty more.
• Voluntary benefits designed to suit your lifestyle - from discounts on retail and socialising, to health & wellbeing, travel and technology
• Fera operates a LTIP ( Long Term Incentive Plan) under which all employees are awarded points towards shares in the Employee Benefits Trust on an annual basis. The Employee Benefits Trust holds shares on behalf of our employee, at the point of an equity event the shares will realise a cash value.

What we hope you'll do next:
Choose 'Apply now' to fill out our short application, so that we can find out more about you. If you have any questions you'd like to ask before applying, you can contact
We're an equal opportunity employer, which means we recruit and develop people based on their merit and passion. We're committed to providing an inclusive, barrier-free recruitment process and working environment for everyone. If you need the job description or application form in an alternative format or if you'd like to discuss other changes or support you might need going forward, please email at and we'll get back to you.
At Fera, we're making the world a better, healthier and safer place. We're a joint venture partnership between Bridgepoint and Defra and we're working proactively to protect the world we live in and the food we eat. Our teams are investigating plant and bee health, crop protection and sustainable agriculture. Join us and discover better as you deliver world-class science for the future.

Skills Required