Senior/Lead Software Engineer

Sygnature Discovery Limited; Monks Heath; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days annual leave (plus bank and/or

Private Medical Insurance

Life Insurance

Employee Assistance Programme

Enhanced Family Friendly Policies

Sygnature Group Pension Scheme

1 paid volunteer day per year

Job summary

Sygnature Discovery Limited is seeking a Senior/Lead Software Engineer for its Computational Sciences and Informatics group at Alderley Park. This hybrid role involves hands-on coding and guiding a small team to build secure, scalable software for drug discovery and business ops.

You will work closely with scientists and informatics staff to translate complex problems into robust solutions. You will design data models, APIs, and ML-powered tools, with a focus on Azure deployment, CI/CD, and

Qualifications

• Degree in Life Sciences, Bioinformatics, Computer Science or Software Engineering.
• Proven experience building production Python software including APIs and testing.
• Strong data modelling and data engineering with relational databases.
• Experience applying AI/ML/NLP/LLMs to practical problems or strong interest.
• Experience deploying on Azure, including containers, CI/CD and IaC.
• Track record of technical ownership from requirements to reliable products.

Responsibilities

• Develop data models, integration pipelines and APIs that scale with data growth.
• Turn complex scientific questions into clear software requirements.
• Use ML, NLP and LLMs to extract, organize and summarize information.
• Design, deploy and support apps on Azure with CI/CD and security practices.
• Shape architecture and engineering standards while balancing delivery timelines.
• Mentor colleagues, lead code reviews and promote automated testing.

Skills

Python production software

APIs

Automated testing

Data modelling

Data engineering

Azure cloud

CI/CD

Infra as code

AI/ML/NLP/LLMs

Education

Bachelor's degree in Life Sciences, Bioinformatics, Computer Science or Software Engineering

Tools

FastAPI

Django

React

TypeScript

Azure Cloud Services

Job description

About Sygnature Discovery

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.

Benefits

25 days annual leave (plus bank holidays)

Private Medical Insurance

Life Insurance

Employee Assistance Programme

Enhanced Family Friendly Policies

Sygnature Group Pension Scheme

1 paid volunteer day per year