Current vacancies

Advanced Research Assistant - Experimental Cancer Genetics

Salary range: £26,960 - £32,622 per annum depending on experience plus excellent benefits. 

Fixed Term Contract for 3 Years.                                                                                                 

With the completion of the human genome and analysis of variation across multiple individuals, attention is now turning to the functional analysis of genes in mammals and their validation as therapeutic targets. Open Targets aims to provide evidence on the biological validity of therapeutic targets and provide an initial assessment of the likely effectiveness of pharmacological intervention on these targets, using genome-scale experiments and analysis. This pioneering public-private partnership between Biogen, Celgene, EMBL-EBI, GlaxoSmithKline, Takeda, and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, aims to provide an R&D framework that applies to all aspects of human disease, and to share its data openly with the scientific community (http://www.opentargets.org).

A new project funded by Open Targets, joint between the Experimental Cancer Genetics group headed by Dr David Adams at the Wellcome Sanger Institute together with Open Targets partners, is to perform in depth analysis of factors that control T cell survival and differentiation within the tumour microenvironment. This will involve the use of bespoke targeted CRISPR screens applied to primary cells and using in vivo tumour models in order to identify novel candidate genes and/or pathways for validation and in-depth characterization.

We are looking for an enthusiastic individual to contribute to the generation of this data including cell culture and performing in vivo tumour models. Detailed record keeping is required, as is contribution to data analysis, review and reporting.

Reference:83326

Assistant IT Manager

Salary range: £28,000-£31,858 per annum depending on experience plus excellent benefits

Advanced Courses & Scientific Conferences is seeking an experienced and enthusiastic Assistant IT Manager to support our expanding programme of UK, overseas and online courses.

Part of Connecting Science at the Wellcome Genome Campus, we fund, develop and deliver over 60 training courses and conferences annually that span basic research, cutting-edge biomedicine and the application of genomics in healthcare.

Reporting to our IT Manager, you will support the set up and testing of computational teaching resources for each of our courses.

Liaising with the course instructors and other stakeholders, including on-site Systems Administration Teams, you will identify software and other computational requirements as well as set up Windows Virtual Machines for each course.

You will provide support during the course to ensure smooth running of the learning sessions. You will also support the delivery and development of teaching resources for our overseas courses in Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as our new programme of online courses.

You will assist the IT Manager in the day-to-day maintenance and development of our IT training facilities and resources at the Genome Campus, including editing our WordPress website.

Working as part of a busy team, you will have the experience and confidence to work in a dynamic and fast paced environment and deliver effective IT support across a busy programme.

During the courses you will need to work flexible hours (weekends and evenings). Overseas travel to support our courses in Africa, Asia and Latin America will also be an option after a suitable period of training and evaluation.

Reference:83324

Computer Biologist / Senior Computer Biologist - Mutographs project

Salary in the region of £25,694- £44,451- dependent on skills and experience (grade 3 or 2), plus excellent benefits

Fixed term contract until May 2022 (Full time or part time)

A unique new opportunity has arisen for a Computer Biologist to join the Cancer Research UK Grand Challenge Project ‘Mutographs’, based at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

Mutographs is a large, international, high profile project, led by Professor Mike Stratton. The project was funded in 2017 in the first round of Cancer Research UK Grand Challenge projects. The project involves geneticists, chemists, bioinformaticians, epidemiologists and patient advocates. It aims to explain major global differences in cancer incidence, through analysis of cancer samples from 5,000 patients, covering 5 different types of cancer, and across 5 continents.

This ambitious task requires a new team member who will be embedded in the multidisciplinary team at Sanger and will be tasked with guiding cancer genome sequence data through the existing Sanger sequence analysis pipelines. The successful candidate will work closely with the postdoctoral scientists, bioinformaticians and project manager based at Sanger.

You will play a key role in the Mutographs team, with daily interactions with scientists and bioinformaticians and the opportunity to participate in international teleconferences and meetings. You will be trained in all aspects of the role and supported as you develop independence.

About you

The position would suit a graduate (or equivalent experience) who is interested in genomics and/or cancer biology, who enjoys responsibility for their own area of work, but within the nurturing environment of a strong team. We are looking for a team player who has can work independently (once trained) to a high level of detail and diligence.

The position may be interesting for a candidate who is returning to work after time out and/or for someone who has further scientific qualifications but does wish to pursue a career trajectory to independent funding. Or from someone wishing to move from wet to dry lab research.

Applications from individuals wishing to work part time are welcome (minimum of ~20 hours per week, please give an indication of hours in your covering letter). This position is available at grade 2 or 3, dependent on relevant experience. This will be discussed during the interview process.

Interested candidates may contact the Mutographs project manager, Laura Humphreys (lp5@sanger.ac.uk), for further information.

Reference:83332

HR Services Manager

Salary range: £33,840 to £40,946 dependent on experience

Permanent 

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced HR professional to join a team that are repositioning how HR Services will contribute to the agenda of enabling and engaging our people.   You will manage a team of HR administrators and drive process, service and HR system improvements.

Your goal is to deliver a people-centred, professional, efficient HR administrative and support service, following best practice guidelines in accordance with Institute procedures. Your key focus is always on people experience, quality controls, compliance, accuracy and continuous improvement.

Your demonstrable HR Services and Systems expertise will be critical as will your appetite for improving and simplifying current processes and procedures. You will be a strong proven team manager, with a track record in managing an HR administration team, identifying training requirements and managing performance against KPI’s. You will oversee the day to day management of the team and will inspire, motivate and support the team as necessary to maintain excellent working relationships with stakeholders and our people. Strong communication skills are essential.

You will be highly confidential, analytical, process and detailed orientated. People focused and bring HR Services expertise and experience.

Key Responsibilities of this position include, but are not limited to, those listed below:

• To motivate, manage and support the HR Administrators to deliver high quality HR transactional and first line advisory service, covering the entire employee life cycle
• To drive continuous improvement: driving opportunities for sophisticated outputs and enhanced ways of working including the implementation of new enablement tools
• Have a deep understanding of all processes and related policies in order that you can support your team, colleagues, our people and recommend value added process or system changes
• Support on-going HR systems improvements, supporting testing, providing learning materials, and training where required
• To effectively manage escalated queries, ensure learnings are taken forward and solutions implemented
• Proactively manage workloads and resource to ensure transactional cases are handled effectively and cohesively in order to meet our employees expectations and monthly payroll deadlines
• To provide regular and ad-hoc HR reporting and routine data integrity analysis for follow up
• To assist and lead on HR related projects and initiatives
• To work in close collaboration and form strong relationships with our people and stakeholders

Reference:83323

Postdoctoral Fellow - Bacterial Evolutionary Biology

Salary in the region of £31,897 - £39,986 (dependent on experience) plus excellent benefits

Fixed term for 3 years

We are seeking a talented, motivated scientist with a strong interest in, and experience of, analyzing genomes and large genomic datasets to gain insights into the patterns and drivers of pathogen evolution. Ideally you would have biological or mathematical/statistics background with a demonstrated interest in developing bioinformatic skills or have proven track record of applying existing skills toward the analysis of complex genomic datasets. 

The position you are applying for falls within the Bacterial Genomics and Evolution faculty team, under the leadership of Professor Nick Thomson. We use genomic approaches to explore questions of basic science relating to the evolution and spread of bacterial pathogens in both humans and animals. We have established, over many years, strong collaborations with groups working on infectious diseases in local as well as national public health settings, NGO’s and leading research institutes around the world, providing access to people, resources and incredible datasets. We have a specialist interest in the evolution and spread of diarrhoeal disease (both the pathogen[s], their host[s] and the role of the microbiota) and tropical diseases. The team has a broad range of lab and informatics experience, and works collaboratively to analyse complex datasets with a history of developing novel informatics and lab-based approaches for accessing genomic and transcriptomic data.  

To help you see the type of work we have been doing, here is a selection of the team’s most recent publications. 

Tropical and diarrhoeal diseases:

• Marks et al., (2018) Direct Whole-Genome Sequencing of Cutaneous Strains of Haemophilus ducreyi. Emerging Infectious Disease. 
• Marks et al., (2018) Diagnostics for Yaws Eradication: Insights From Direct Next-Generation Sequencing of Cutaneous Strains of Treponema pallidum. Clinical Infectious Disease.
• Hadfield (2017) Comprehensive global genome dynamics of Chlamydia trachomatis show ancient diversification followed by contemporary mixing and recent lineage expansion. Genome Research.
• Domman et al., (2017) Defining endemic cholera at three levels of spatiotemporal resolution within Bangladesh. Nature Genetics
• Domman et al., 2017 Integrated view of Vibrio cholerae in the Americas. Science 

Methods lab and in silico:

• Page et al., (2018) PlasmidTron: assembling the cause of phenotypes and genotypes from NGS data Microbial Genomics
• Seth-Smith Generating whole bacterial genome sequences of low-abundance species from complex samples with IMS-MDA. Nature Protocols. 

Antimicrobial resistance: 

• Baker S. et al., (2018) Genomic insights into the emergence and spread of antimicrobial-resistant bacterial pathogensScience
• Baker K., et al., (2018) Horizontal antimicrobial resistance transfer drives epidemics of multiple Shigella species. Nature Communications. 

In addition, these are important papers from other groups chosen to give you a sense of the team’s broader interests and areas/themes that they may wish to explore. 

• Chen & Shapiro (2015) The advent of genome-wide association studies for bacteria. Current Opinion in Microbiology
  
• Sela, et al. (2016) Theory of prokaryotic genome evolution PNAS 
• Peischl et al. (2016) Genetic surfing in human populations: from genes to genomes. Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 
• Richardson et al. (2018)  Gene exchange drives the ecological success of a multi-host bacterial pathogen. Nature Ecology and Evolution
• Harkins et al.  (2017) Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus emerged long before the introduction of methicillin into clinical practice Genome Biology
• Corander et al. (2017). Frequency-dependent selection in vaccine-associated pneumococcal population dynamics. Nature Ecology & Evolution

If you wish to highlight a possible area of interest based on any of the papers above for further discussion, if shortlisted for an interview, please do highlight this in your application.  

This position would place you within a Faculty team within the Parasites and Microbes Programme, all set within a world leading genomics institute. You would be working closely with informaticians, wet-lab biologists, Postdoctoral Fellows and PhD students within the group and across this programme. You will be required to coordinate analysis of multiple project datasets and identify and establish new collaborations and projects, as well as to form part of an integrated team. The candidate will have substantial support and opportunities to broaden their skill-set and further their career.

Reference:83320

Postdoctoral Fellow - Synthetic Genomics

Salary in the region of £31,503 - £39,492 (dependent on experience) plus excellent benefits

Fixed term for 3 years

A Postdoctoral Fellow position is available at the Wellcome Sanger Institute (WSI) as part of  the Insititute's new synthetic genomics initiative coordinated by Jason Chin, Tom Ellis, Patrick Cai, and Kaihang Wang. This is an exciting opportunity for the successful candidate to develop state of the art methods and standardized workflows for genome engineering and synthesis.

The successful applicant will hold a PhD and will have gained significant experience and expertise in a range of molecular biology techniques. Experience in the following is desired but not essential: yeast genetics, DNA manipulation technologies, genome editing, automation and robotics. Successful candidate will be expected to drive forward the project, working closely with relevant members of the Institute and the wider scientific community to accomplish scientific objectives.

Reference:83321

Recruitment Marketing and Social Media Manager

Salary range: £33,840 to £38,000 dependent on experience

Fixed-term: 18 months

The Wellcome Sanger Institute’s Recruitment and Immigration team have a new and exciting opportunity open for a Social Media and Marketing Manager.

Using experimental approaches, you will lead the development of our recruitment social media strategy to plan & execute robust and impactful marketing campaigns, identifying the most appropriate methods and content for attracting high quality talent to the organisation. You will seek out interesting stories or angles that align with our function’s priorities and expertise and suggest effective ways to communicate them. 

Skilled in analytics, you will use data to drive improvements, increase candidate awareness and shape social media strategy and you will also be responsible for the maintenance of our internal and external web pages.

With large amounts of experience in building and implementing multi-channel attraction strategies and a deep understanding of Linkedin, you will need excellent writing skills, a passion for innovation and be skilled at managing relationships. You will be great at managing your time, love data and analytics and be a natural reader/learner to strive to keep your market knowledge up to date. 

For an informal chat about the position, please contact Sam Bowker (sb15@sanger.ac.uk).

Reference:83314

Research Assistant - Translational Cancer Genomics Team

Salary in the region of £19,709 - £23,848 (dependent on experience) plus excellent benefits

Fixed term for 2 years

The Translational Cancer Genomics Team focuses on understanding the consequences of alterations in the DNA of cancer cells. We do this at scale using multiple approaches including drug sensitivity screens and whole-genome CRISPR-Cas9 screens in cancer cell models. Vulnerabilities within cancer cells, identified from the data generated, can then be exploited as novel drug targets or as genetic markers for patient selection.

We are seeking an enthusiastic research assistant to carry out routine laboratory protocols and procedures. The role will be based in the laboratory focusing on culturing cell models and managing laboratory supplies and equipment. The individual will be involved in research and development of new protocols for the group, so will need to be adaptable to changing priorities. It is expected that the successful candidate will be able to use their skills and experience to trouble shoot and innovate where required.

Experience in cell culture and associated techniques or high-throughput laboratories would be an advantage although not essential. The highly integrated work requires excellent interpersonal and communication skills to co-ordinate tasks, equipment and information between team members.

Reference:83337

Statistical Geneticist

Salary range: £36,000-£44,000 per annum depending on experience plus excellent benefits.

Fixed Term Contract for 3 Years.

Open Targets has recently launched Open Targets Genetics (https://genetics.opentargets.org), a portal that aggregates large scale GWAS data with functional genomics data to identify potential drug targets at disease-associated loci.

A Statistical Geneticist role funded by Open Targets, is available at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in a new team under the leadership of Dr. Maya Ghoussaini. This is an exciting opportunity for you to participate in the enhancement of the existing Open Targets Genetics Portal through the development of new functionality and features.

You will actively engage in the integration of new eQTL datasets and tissue-specific chromatin interaction datasets.

You will have the opportunity to work across a range of analysis such as:

• Aggregate large scale GWAS data from multiple consortia and across a wide range of disease and traits.
• Perform association analysis on UK Biobank data with a particular focus on therapeutic areas important for Open Targets
• Work together with other members of the Open Targets team on statistical genetics analysis for large scale sequence analysis
• Work with existing members of the team to integrate genetic and cell-specific genomic data to identify and validate causal links between targets and diseases and improve the Genetics Portal.

We welcome candidates with a background in statistical genetics or relevant discipline with advanced level of programming skills suitable for statistical genetic analyses of complex diseases. Experience in functional genomics data analysis is highly desirable. You will have the opportunity to interact with active computational and experimental research teams using cutting edge genomic techniques. 

Reference:83297