Bioinformatics Quality Assurance Specialist

Sano Genetics; London; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading biotechnology company is seeking a Bioinformatics QA Specialist to ensure the reliability of genomic analyses. This remote position involves building quality into bioinformatics code, validating tests, and collaborating across teams to meet audit standards. Ideal for candidates with a strong background in genetics and bioinformatics tools. Salary up to £60k pa.

Qualifications

• Solid grounding in genetics/genomics with experience in VCF, BAM, FASTQ formats.
• Experience validating clinical bioinformatics pipelines.
• Ability to write unit/integration tests in real-world pipelines.
• Documentation-first mindset for audit readiness.

Responsibilities

• Establish systematic validation and testing across pipelines.
• Build and maintain test coverage for Python-based APIs.
• Create audit-ready documentation and support clinical-grade pipeline validation.
• Collaborate with engineering and regulatory teams.

Skills

Knowledge of genetics/genomics

Experience with VCF, BAM, FASTQ formats

Proficient in Bash

Proficient in Python

Experience validating clinical bioinformatics pipelines

Experience with SQL

Familiarity with Docker

Familiarity with AWS

Tools

Nextflow

GitHub Actions

Job description

About Sano

Mission; what we do

• accelerating the world's transition to personalised medicine

Purpose; why we do it

• to speed up development of life-saving treatments for those with limited options

Vision; where we're going

• become the world's best source of patient-in-the-loop genomic and health data for precision medicine development

We're looking for a Bioinformatics QA Specialist to help us take our bioinformatics codebase to the next level. This is a chance to make a real impact: you'll be the person who makes sure our analyses are reliable today, while also preparing us for the clinical standards of tomorrow.

Reporting into Lead Genetic Epidemiologist, Dr Katie Barnes, you'l combine your knowledge of genomics with your eye for detail to build quality into everything we do. You'll be hands-on with data pipelines, designing tests, and validating results, while also shaping the frameworks and documentation that will carry us towards compliance with ISO 15189, CLIA, CAP and IVDR standards. You'll work closely with bioinformaticians, engineers, and regulatory experts to make sure our science is robust, reproducible, and audit-ready.

Role

• Role - Bioinformatics QA Specialist
• Salary - up to £60k pa
• Location - Remote (UK only)

How you'll make an impact

• Establish systematic validation and testing across pipelines.
• Build and maintain test coverage for Python-based APIs.
• Build and enhance CI/CD pipelines (e.g. using GitHub Actions) to provide faster feedback and safer releases.
• Create audit-ready documentation (traceability, validation reports, SOPs).
• Identify risks and stabilise high-priority parts of the codebase.
• Support the move towards clinical-grade pipeline validation under ISO 15189, CLIA, CAP and IVDR.
• Collaborate with engineering, regulatory and product teams to embed QA best practices.

Qualifications

• Have a solid grounding in genetics/genomics and experience working with formats like VCF, BAM, FASTQ (and associated QC tools).
• Have experience validating clinical bioinformatics pipelines.
• Are comfortable working with tools like Bash, Python, Nextflow, SQL, Docker, AWS.
• Know how to write unit/integration tests (e.g. pytest, bats, nf-test) in real-world pipelines.
• Bring a documentation-first mindset and care about audit-readiness.
• Collaborate well across engineering, scientific, and regulatory teams.

Even better if you

• Have experience with polygenic risk scores, pharmacogenomics, or rare variant pipelines.
• Have multi-omics pipeline experience (RNA-seq, methylation, proteomics).
• Are familiar with R, Seqera and infrastructure-as-code tools (such as Terraform).

This role is unlikely to be a great match if

• You prefer highly structured, slow-moving environments.
• You are uncomfortable working across multiple languages/tools (Bash, Python, R, SQL).
• You're not interested in regulatory and compliance frameworks.

Research shows that some people are less likely to apply for a role unless they are 100% qualified. Your experience, skills and passion will set you apart so tell us about your achievements, irrespective of whether they are personal or work-related, tell us about your journey, and about what you learnt.

So, if this role excites you, don't let our role description hold you back, get applying!

Hiring Process

1. Initial screening with Becca
2. Deep dive with Katie
3. Panel Interview with the team
4. Final Interview

Support - If you have a medical condition or an individual need for an adjustment to our process, and you believe this may affect your ability to be at your best - please let us know so we can talk about how we can best support you and make any adjustments that may be needed. All interviews at Sano take place virtually. Please let us know if we can help make a virtual interview run smoother for you.

Please note:

We can only accept applications from those eligible to live and work in the UK or in the USA (for specific roles). We are unable to sponsor visas for this position.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging

At Sano, we're committed to creating an environment that promotes diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. We are a global community and we believe our unique qualities should be celebrated as they are critical to our innovation. It's essential to us that you bring your authentic self to work every single day, no matter your age, ethnicity, religion, citizenship, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, caring responsibilities, neurodiversity, or otherwise. Inclusion isn't just an initiative at Sano. We strive to embed it not just into our values but throughout our entire culture.