Do you want to help us improve human health and understand life on Earth? Make your mark by shaping the future to enable or deliver life-changing science to solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges.

Are you a collaborative, innovative Technical Delivery Lead with a ‘can-do’ approach, looking to contribute towards solving real global public health challenges? Do you have a passion for enabling a DevSecOps culture? Do you love the challenge of delivering digital solutions that add real value to organisations? If yes, then come and join our team!

Every person who has joined the team has stated that they want to ‘make a difference in this world’. If this resonates with you, we’d love to meet you.

Be inspired by the world-famous Wellcome Sanger Institute, and come and join the newly formed Genomic Surveillance Unit, which uses next-generation genomics to guide vital public health decisions for diseases including malaria and COVID-19. No scientific background needed!

About the Role:

As the Technical Delivery Lead you will take a hands-on approach leading and managing a technical team of Software Developers and DevOps engineers that build, configure, deploy and provide ongoing support for a range of new and existing digital products and platforms.

You will work with other leaders the team and the organisation to shape the digital product offerings that serve the needs of our funders, partners and customers as well as our organisation.

In this role you will:

  • Lead a team to ensure our infrastructure and software products are developed, supported, managed, secured and maintained, according to agreed standards.
  • Assume full line management responsibilities including recruitment, performance and development.
  • Influence decisions around technical approach and choice of tools ensuring a practical approach that aligns with partner needs, organisation needs and industry best practice, chairing the Technical Design Authority.
  • Engage with the organisation to understand current and future software and infrastructure needs and work with relevant advisors to review and update the reference architecture.
  • Plan and coordinate the technical infrastructure and application development and deployment aspects of multiple software and integration projects providing input into Product Management decisions.
  • Maintain GSU systems by ensuring versions of code dependencies, operating systems and firmware (if required) are up to date and compatible, with a well-defined maintenance roadmap in place.
  • Assist and oversee the provisioning, maintenance and security of our cloud-based infrastructure in AWS, GCP and OpenStack
  • Support an agile approach to development, working with Product Managers and Scrum masters to provide technical expertise
  • Build and develop performant and maintainable infrastructure and tools to meet the current and future needs of the GSU to facilitate the building of this community.
  • Work in collaboration with technical team members to provide incident management support to the organisation.

About You:

To excel in this role, you should have experience of the following:

  • Line management and/or technical leadership
  • Solid knowledge related to Software Engineering, DevOps practices and Agile principles
  • Experience of and active interest in cloud-based technologies and management
  • Knowledge and experience with modern software development practices, including version control, continuous integration and workflow management tools such as Jira, Gitlab, etc.
  • Operational cybersecurity principles and associated solutions
  • Demonstrable experience in creating technical roadmaps for systems for upgrades, security updates, release updates etc

About the Tech:

Python is our primary language with it we build tools, and web services using Flask and increasingly FastAPI. Our pipelines run on Airflow. We enforce PEP8 like standards via flake8 and black, and utilise PyTest for unit tests. Our development is supported by dedicated QA team members. We use Vue.js 3 for frontend development. Our services are containerised with Docker and deployed via Docker-Machine, Swarm, and soon k8. We use Gitlab for source control, project management, and CI/CD. We use the Scrum framework to develop products guided by trained Scrum masters. Our cloud platforms include AWS (Primary Public Cloud), OpenStack (Primary WSI Cloud) and GCP. Our configuration management is done in Ansible, Packer, Helm with IaC managed on Terraform. We use AWS ECS, GKE and K8s on-prem for container orchestration. Nagios, Prometheus and Grafana are our monitoring and alerting tools.

Additional Information

Salary: £76,000 – £90,000

We have adopted a hybrid model to support a balance of remote and office working. You can find out more about our inspiring campus here.

Please apply with your CV and cover letter outlining:

  • Your suitability for the role
  • Your experience as a leader and manager in similar roles
  • Your approach to team leadership
  • Any references to prior projects you’ve been involved in that you believe are relevant for consideration

Working at Wellcome Sanger

Our flexible-hybrid working environment means you can focus on being productive and part of the team while enjoying the benefits of working remotely and from the Genome Campus when you are in the office.

We aim to attract, recruit, retain and develop talent from the widest possible talent pool, thereby gaining insight and access to different markets to generate a greater impact on the world. We have a supportive culture with the following staff networks, LGBTQ+, Parents and Carers and Race Equity to bring people together to share experiences, offer specific support and development opportunities and raise awareness. The networks are also a place for allies to provide support to others.

We want our people to be whoever they want to be because we believe people who bring their best selves to work, do their best work. That’s why we’re committed to creating a truly inclusive culture at Sanger Institute. We will consider all individuals without discrimination and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees, where everyone can thrive.