Bioinformatician – NGS Swindon

Bioinformatician – NGS

Bioinformaticians in NGS (Next-Generation Sequencing) analyze complex genomic and transcriptomic data to uncover meaningful biological insights in both research and clinical settings. They support applications such as oncology, rare disease diagnostics, infectious disease surveillance, and personalized medicine.

Typical responsibilities:

• Building and maintaining NGS analysis pipelines – For tasks like alignment, variant calling, gene expression profiling, or differential expression analysis using tools like BWA, GATK, STAR, or DESeq2.

• Interpreting sequencing data – Filtering, annotating, and classifying variants or patterns relevant to biological hypotheses or clinical outcomes.

• Collaborating with molecular biologists and clinicians – Ensuring data pipelines are integrated with lab workflows and meet scientific and regulatory expectations.

• Visualizing and reporting results – Creating reproducible reports using R Markdown, Jupyter, or Shiny apps.

• Working within secure, compliant frameworks – Supporting data protection under HIPAA, GDPR, and clinical regulatory standards (e.g. CLIA, CAP).

Bioinformaticians typically use Linux-based environments, with proficiency in Python, R, Bash scripting, and workflow managers like Snakemake or Nextflow.

Swindon

Swindon is a town in Wiltshire, in the South West region of England.  It is located approximately 35 miles from both Bristol and Reading and 78 miles from London.  Other major towns within reasonable distance include Oxford, Cheltenham and Salisbury.  Swindon is on the main railway line from Bristol to London Paddington and, with an average journey time of only 1 hour to London, it is a major commuter town.  Road connections are also good, thanks to the proximity of the M4 motorway.  Although many residents commute to London, Bristol and other cities, a substantial number of major employers are located in Swindon including engineering firms such as Honda, BMW/Mini and Halcrow as well as W H Smith's HQ and distribution centre and pharmaceutical companies including Patheon, Catalent Pharma Solutions and Vygon (UK) Ltd.   Swindon also has the head office of the National Trust, the UK Space Agency and national Research Councils including the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Swindon has two major museums; the STEAM Museum which provides a detailed history of the Great Western Railway and the Museum of Computing, it is also home to the Bodleian Library's book depository, which contains 153 miles of bookshelves

Famous people from Swindon:  Billie Piper; actress and Melinda Messenger; glamour model and TV presenter