Bioinformatician

Bioinformatician

This post is a Fixed Term / Secondment position until 31 March 2024

About the Organisation:
Public Health Scotland is Scotland’s lead national agency for improving and protecting the health and wellbeing of all of Scotland’s people. Our vision is of a Scotland where everybody thrives. Our focus is on increasing healthy life expectancy and reducing premature mortality. To do this, we use data, intelligence and a place-based approach to lead and deliver Scotland’s public health priorities.

The role of the Clinical and Protecting Health Directorate is to protect the people of Scotland from infectious and environmental hazards; enable high-quality clinical and public health knowledge, research and innovation; and change clinical and public health practice by using audits at a national and local level.

The Post:
An exciting and novel opportunity has arisen with the Clinical and Protecting Health Directorate of PHS, within their Public Health Microbiology Bioinformatics Team. Genomic services have been established in the NHS for a limited number of bacterial pathogens in the Scottish Microbiology Reference Laboratories (SMiRL), and for SARS-CoV-2 in the Scottish Specialist Virology Centres (SSVC). PHS bioinformatics team supports local bioinformatic analysis in SMiRL of bacterial services, and central bioinformatics for SARS-CoV-2 service. The investment by the Scottish Government in SARS-CoV-2 sequencing has provided the potential to expand the repertoire of pathogens sequenced and from a wider range of origins. The post holder will be responsible for the delivery of bioinformatics in PHS and the Scottish Microbiology Reference Laboratories.

We currently have 1 post to be filled, should additional vacancies occur within 6 months, candidates who were not successful at this time, but appointable at interview, may be contacted within this time period to be offered a post.

The Candidate:
The post holder will maintain, enhance and develop reliable and efficient infrastructure for bioinformatics tools and processes to ensure the highest quality public health microbiology service. You will be responsible for developing and maintaining protocols for the primary and secondary analysis of next generation sequencing (NGS) data for detailed and accurate sub-typing of Microbiology isolates and rapid and accurate outbreak identification.

You will have strong communication skills and work collaboratively with the scientific staff to transform large volumes of statistical and genomic data into annotated results for clinical reporting in PHS.

You shall be an enthusiastic, flexible individual who will provide leadership and highly specialised advice and training on bioinformatics to colleagues within PHS, the Scottish Microbiology Reference Laboratories and the wider public health microbiology community.

Location and Working Pattern:
The post will be based in Glasgow or Edinburgh. It should be noted that PHS is currently in the process of relocating from Meridian Court to nearby Delta House, 50 West Nile street, Glasgow, G21 2N.

There will be an expectation to travel to local areas for some meetings and events.

It is a condition of this employment that you must live and remain a resident within the UK for the post in which you will be employed with PHS.

This is a full time post at 37.5 hours per week.

During times of public health emergency, or other urgent business need, you may be required on a temporary basis to work your normal contracted working hours over 7 days including weekends, in order to meet the needs of the service.

Salary placement will start at the bottom point of the scale unless individuals have previous NHS experience.

Benefits:
Our benefits package includes pension scheme, comprehensive range of work life balance policies, occupational health services, learning resource centres and discounted leisure, financial and shopping benefits.

Further Information:
For an informal discussion on the post, please contact Patricia Kennedy on patricia.kennedy@phs.scot or Sharif Shaaban on sharif.shaaban2@phs.scot
Closing date for completed applications is Friday 28th April
Further information on PHS is available from: www.publichealthscotland.scot

Please note that the majority of correspondence is sent by e-mail only, so please check your e-mail regularly (including junk folders).

Public Health Scotland is an equal opportunities employer and as such guarantees to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for our vacancies