Senior Bioinformatics Scientist Full-time

Senior Bioinformatics Scientist

At Illumina, we're united by a clear purpose: to improve human health by unlocking the power of the genome. We're looking for a Senior Bioinformatics Scientist to join our Cambridge team and help push the boundaries of what's possible in genomics.

This is a rare opportunity to work at the cutting edge of sequencing technology, contributing to products that are used globally to advance research, accelerate discovery, and improve outcomes for patients.

Why Join Illumina?

You'll be part of the team behind DRAGEN, our fast and highly accurate FPGA-accelerated platform for secondary analysis of NGS data, fully integrated with the Illumina Connected Analytics (ICA) Cloud. DRAGEN supports a wide range of applications across germline and somatic analysis, DNA/RNA workflows, CNVs, and structural variants.

Your work may be one part of a much larger system—but it's a system helping scientists and clinicians tackle some of the hardest challenges in healthcare, including cancer and rare disease. This is innovation with real purpose.

We also offer industry-leading benefits, including flexible time off, private medical insurance, compassion and care leave, pension, employee stock purchase programme, volunteer time off, and more.

The Role

As a Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, you'll be trusted to take accountability for developing novel computational and statistical methods that extract meaningful biological insight from genomic data. You'll own projects end to end—while working closely with a broader, highly collaborative team to ensure solutions are robust, scalable, and ready for real-world use.

Day to day, your focus will be on programming and data analysis, clearly communicating results, explaining the what and the why, and presenting findings in a way that enables others to act on them. You'll help shape not just the science, but the success of the product as a whole.

What You'll Do

1. Design, prototype, and implement innovative computational and statistical algorithms for sequencing data
2. Develop high-performance, production-grade software in C/C++
3. Analyse, integrate, model, and interpret complex experimental genomic data
4. Win together by collaborating closely with interdisciplinary teams across FPGA, software, QC/QA, and clinical genomics
5. Help define product requirements, assess accuracy, and streamline workflows to make our customers heroes
6. Clearly communicate technical methods and findings through documentation, presentations, and internal/external materials

What You'll Bring

You're someone who combines deep technical expertise with a structured, thoughtful approach to problem-solving. You plan well, manage your time effectively, and communicate clearly.

You'll have:

• Strong background in computer science, algorithms, and statistics
• Deep expertise in genomics and next-generation sequencing
• Experience with NGS secondary analysis, including alignment and variant calling
• Proven experience in high-performance software development
• Strong communication and presentation skills
• Experience in areas such as cancer, rare disease, or population genetics is highly valued

Education PhD in computer science, engineering, statistics, bioinformatics, or related field—or a Master's degree with 3+ years of relevant experience.