Senior/Lead Software Engineer

Sygnature Discovery; Macclesfield; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days annual leave

Employee Assistance Programme

Enhanced Family Friendly Policies

Job summary

Sygnature Discovery seeks a Senior or Lead Software Engineer to join the Computational Sciences and Informatics group at Alderley Park. Hybrid role requiring on-site presence three times weekly.

You will design, develop and maintain software platforms supporting drug discovery, with emphasis on data, AI, and secure, scalable solutions. You will work with scientists and informatics professionals to translate complex challenges into robust software, lead coding efforts, and help shape

Qualifications

• Degree in Life Sciences, Bioinformatics, Computer Science or Software Engineering.
• Substantial experience building production software in Python, including APIs and automated testing.
• Strong data modelling and data engineering with relational databases, designed for scale.
• Experience applying AI, ML, NLP or LLMs to practical problems or interest in doing so.
• Experience deploying apps on Azure, including containers, CI/CD and infrastructure as code.
• Track record of technical ownership from ambiguous requirements to reliable products.
• Experience guiding or mentoring other developers.
• Experience with RAG or LLM agents and Azure AI services is desirable.
• Experience with FastAPI or Django and React/TypeScript is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Develop data models, integration pipelines and APIs for scalable data handling.
• Turn scientific and business questions into clear requirements.
• Apply ML, NLP and LLM techniques to extract and summarize information.
• Design, deploy and support applications on Azure with CI/CD and security practices.
• Shape architecture and engineering standards while balancing delivery timelines.
• Mentor teammates, lead code reviews and promote automated testing.
• Collaborate with scientists to build software meeting their needs.
• Ensure authentication, data protection and ISO 27001 alignment.

Skills

Python API development

Data modelling

AI / NLP / LLMs

Azure cloud

CI/CD / IaC

Code review & mentoring

Retrieval augmented generation

Web frameworks (FastAPI/Django)

Education

Bachelor's degree in Life Sciences / Bioinformatics / CS / SWE

Tools

Azure Container Apps

Managed databases & storage

Key Vault / Entra ID / AI services

React / TypeScript front-ends

Job description

At Sygnature Discovery, we create exceptional scientific outcomes. For our customers, who bring life-changing medicines to patients; and for our people, who help make this possible.

We’re 700+ scientists from over 50 countries, working as one across Europe and North America. With no competing internal programs, we offer total confidentiality and commitment.

Over the past 20 years, we’ve earned a track record of real impact: 60+ advanced candidates, 250 patents filed, 200+ active projects. Over 90% of our customers choose to stay with us – from biotechs racing to clinic to pharma companies that need specialised expertise for targeted challenges.

About the role:

We have an exciting opportunity for a Senior or Lead Software Engineer to join our Computational Sciences and Informatics group at either Alderley Park. This is a hybrid role, with an expectation to be on site 3 times per week.

The Senior Software Engineer will design, develop and maintain software platforms that support drug discovery, scientific research and business operations across the organisation. Working within a small, collaborative engineering team, you will engage directly with scientists, informatics specialists and operational teams to understand complex scientific and business challenges and translate them into secure, scalable and maintainable software solutions.

Your focus will be on the data and AI side of our work: designing how scientific information is captured, modelled, analysed and made useful, and applying modern techniques such as large language models where they add real value. Experience in drug discovery, life sciences, bioinformatics or cheminformatics would be an advantage, but is not essential.

This is a hands‑on role where you'll write much of the code yourself and set the technical direction, and offer guidance to the team.

This is a great opportunity for someone who enjoys taking ownership of a system and working with scientists to develop software that meets their needs.

Role Responsibilities:

• Develop data models, integration pipelines and APIs that stay correct, traceable and fast as data volumes grow.
• Turn loosely defined scientific and business questions into clear requirements.
• Use machine learning, natural language processing and large language models to extract, organise and summarise scientific and business information, and measure whether they actually work.
• Design, deploy and support applications on Azure, contributing to CI/CD, infrastructure as code, monitoring, security and disaster recovery practices.
• Shape architecture, engineering standards and technical direction while balancing delivery timescales and business priorities.
• Mentor colleagues, lead code review, and promote automated testing and maintainable design.
• Help shape the scientific platforms, applications and data solutions that enable cutting‑edge research across Sygnature Discovery.
• Apply authentication and access control, protect confidential information, encrypt data in transit and at rest, and keep solutions in line with our ISO 27001 commitments.

Skills & Qualifications:

• A degree in Life Sciences, Bioinformatics, Computer Science or Software Engineering.
• Substantial experience building production software in Python, including APIs and automated testing.
• Strong data modelling and data engineering skills with relational databases, including designing for complex domains and for performance at scale.
• Experience applying AI, machine learning, NLP or large language models to solve practical problems, or a demonstrable interest in doing so
• Experience deploying and running applications on a major cloud platform, ideally Azure, including containers, CI/CD and infrastructure as code.
• A track record of technical ownership: taking systems from ambiguous requirements to reliable products.
• Experience guiding, mentoring or reviewing the work of other developers.
• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), LLM agents or model evaluation is desirable along with experience with Azure services such as Container Apps, managed databases, Storage, Key Vault, Entra ID or AI services.
• Experience with web frameworks such as FastAPI or Django and familiarity with React or TypeScript front‑ends is also desirable.

• 25 days annual leave (plus bank holidays)
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Enhanced Family Friendly Policies