Senior Full Stack Software Engineer - Pathogen

Led by a world-class faculty of scientists, technologists, policy makers, economists and entrepreneurs, the Ellison Institute of Technology aims to develop and deploy commercially sustainable solutions to solve some of humanity’s most enduring challenges. Our work is guided by four Humane Endeavours: Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology, Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture, Climate Change & Managing Atmospheric CO2 and Artificial Intelligence & Robotics.

Set for completion in 2027, the EIT Campus in Littlemore will include more than 300,000 sq ft of research laboratories, educational and gathering spaces. Fuelled by growing ambition and the strength of Oxford’s science ecosystem, EIT is now expanding its footprint to a 2 million sq ft Campus across the western part of The Oxford Science Park. Designed by Foster + Partners led by Lord Norman Foster, this will become a transformative workplace for up to 7,000 people, with autonomous laboratories, purpose-built laboratories including a plant sciences building and dynamic spaces to spark interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Pathogen Mission highlights EIT’s transformative approach, using Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) and Oracle’s cloud technology to create a global pathogen metagenomics system. This initiative aims to improve diagnostics, provide early epidemic warnings, and guide treatments by profiling antimicrobial resistance. The goal is to deliver certified diagnostic tools for widespread use in labs, hospitals, and public health.

EIT Oxford fosters a culture of collaboration, innovation, and resilience, valuing diverse expertise to drive sustainable solutions to humanity’s enduring challenges.

We are seeking to recruit a Senior Full Stack Software Engineer to help design, build, and maintain user-facing components of our scalable, high-performance data platform supporting our bioinformaticians and science teams. This role blends hands-on engineering (70–80%) with people leadership and a focus on engineering excellence, raising the bar on standards, security, reliability, observability, and quality.

You’ll collaborate closely within a cross-functional team, working with architects, platform engineers, and data engineers to deliver platform tools that manage the full data lifecycle, monitor sequencing device telemetry, and provide the tooling our science teams need to discover and use data.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and support web applications deployed to support the data platform.
• Own full stack development for tools supporting data management across the full lifecycle, including ingest monitoring, curation, release management, data quality monitoring, and user access control.
• Build and support components to manage ingest from and monitor distributed next-generation sequencing devices, including device telemetry (Kafka, MQTT streaming from Oxford Nanopore NGS devices).
• Design, develop, and maintain platform tools to help bioinformaticians and science teams discover, understand, and access data (e.g., pathogen data catalogue, quality dashboards, management information reporting).
• Support innovation efforts by exploring new technologies such as vector databases to enable search and AI use cases.
• Design, develop, and maintain highly performant, scalable, and secure backend APIs using appropriate technologies (Python, NodeJS).
• Implement and manage data storage solutions including data lakes, data warehouses, and databases underpinning platform tooling (e.g., object storage, Oracle Autonomous Database, PostgreSQL).
• Collaborate with backend engineers to ensure data services and associated APIs meet the needs of platform tools.
• Work with product managers to capture requirements, wireframe solutions, and design user experiences.
• Work with big data technologies such as Kafka, Iceberg, and Parquet, and managed database technologies including PostgreSQL and Oracle vector databases.
• Ensure applications are secure.
• Operate, monitor, and maintain associated Oracle Cloud infrastructure to ensure platform tools are highly available, scalable, and secure.
• Collaborate with DevSecOps engineers to ensure all deployments are automated and follow best-practice CI/CD.
• Ensure solutions are documented and assured through defined architecture governance processes.
• Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting systems to maintain the health and performance of the data platform.
• Line manage and foster the personal development of a highly capable team of front-end engineers focused on the data platform.

Essential Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Proven experience as a full stack engineer.
• Proficiency in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and front-end frameworks such as React, Angular, or Vue.js.
• Experience with backend languages and frameworks such as Python, NodeJS, Next.js, Django, or Spring Boot.
• Expertise in at least one cloud platform and its related managed services.
• Knowledge of both relational SQL and NoSQL database systems.
• Skills in UX design (e.g., Figma).
• Knowledge of containerization using Kubernetes and Docker.
• Experience working with streaming technologies (Kafka).
• Proven experience developing scalable architectures using both containerized and serverless approaches (e.g., Oracle Functions or AWS Lambda).
• Familiarity with version management and best practices (Git).
• Experience managing teams and fostering a high-performance, collaborative culture.
• Understanding of Agile working practices and sprint-based methodologies.
• Ability to actively contribute to knowledge sharing.
• Knowledge of security best practices.

Desirable Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Experience with Oracle Cloud (OCI).
• Experience with Jira, Confluence, or similar project management tools.
• Experience working with scientific analytical, statistical, and visualization libraries.

Key Attributes:

• Strong collaboration skills.
• Willingness to learn and cross-train/upskill in new technologies.
• Hands-on approach to exploring new technologies and developing proofs of concept.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to think critically about security challenges.
• Excellent communication and teamwork abilities, especially in cross-functional teams.
• Ability to manage multiple tasks and meet deadlines in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
• Attention to detail and a strong commitment to security and quality assurance.
• Flexibility to adapt and contribute to a rapidly scaling organisation.

We offer the following benefits:

• Enhanced holiday pay
• Pension
• Life Assurance
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance
• Hospital Cash Plan
• Therapy Services
• Perk Box
• Electrical Car Scheme

Why work for EIT:

At the Ellison Institute, we believe a collaborative, inclusive team is key to our success. We are building a supportive environment where creative risks are encouraged, and everyone feels heard. Valuing emotional intelligence, empathy, respect, and resilience, we encourage people to be curious and to have a shared commitment to excellence. Join us and make an impact!

Terms of Appointment:

• You must have the right to work permanently in the UK with a willingness to travel as necessary.
• You will live in, or within easy commuting distance of, Oxford.
• During peak periods, some longer hours may be required and some working across multiple time zones due to the global nature of the programme.