Data Engineer

Astex Pharmaceuticals is a world leader in innovative drug discovery and development. The company has successfully applied its proprietary Fragment-Based Drug Discovery platform to generate multiple new drug candidates that are progressing in clinical development. Successful collaborations have led to two launched oncology drugs (Kisqali® partnered with Novartis and Balversa® partnered with Janssen). Astex continues to grow and focuses on Neurological Disorders and Oncology.

Job Type

3 Year Fixed Term Contract, Full Time

The Opportunity

We are looking for a data engineer to join the bioinformatics team to support our data infrastructure and workflows. In the team we work with large-scale data, generated from high-throughput omics’ technologies to identify novel drug targets and biomarker-driven patient stratification for our oncology and neuroscience programs. You will be working closely with software engineers, data scientists and bioinformaticians to design, build and support data warehouse, architecture, and scalable data processing pipelines, as well as interacting with the wider scientific community at Astex to help meet these goals.

Principal Responsibilities

• Work closely with software engineers, data scientists and bioinformaticians to curate, process and manage large-scale in-house and proprietary multi-modal datasets
• Maintain in-house data warehouse and implement architecture solutions to improve database design and performance
• Contribute to the implementation of FAIR data management approaches and best practices, including technical documentation
• Implement solutions to ensure consistent data availability, quality and integrity
• Contribute to the evaluation and development of software solutions to support complex data processing, integration (e.g., knowledge graphs) and visualisation
• Monitoring and evaluating data workflows to facilitate efficient data access and analyses

Candidate Requirements

All candidates must have:

• Degree in software engineering, computer science, or equivalent experience
• Strong proficiency in python, web frameworks and designing back-end components
• Experience in SQL databases and APIs
• Aptitude for logical problem solving and enthusiastic attitude to learning and development
• Excellent communication skills, including an ability to work in inter-disciplinary teams with computational, biologists and translational scientists

The following qualifications would be beneficial, but are not essential:

• Knowledge of bioinformatics tools, resources and public databases
• Experience working with knowledge graphs/graph databases (e.g., Neo4J)
• Experience building and deploying containerised applications (e.g., Docker)

Why Astex

We offer excellent training and career development opportunities as well as highly competitive salary and benefits package including hybrid working options to promote a flexible and inclusive work environment.

At Astex we embrace diversity and equality of opportunity. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse Company representing all backgrounds, harnessing industry-leading scientific innovation, and behaviours.

Astex is situated 2.5 miles from Cambridge City centre on the Cambridge Science Park. The Park has onsite sports facilities and excellent transport links to London.

The role closes on: 9 December 2023

More information

For information on Astex Pharmaceuticals please visit: www.astx.com

For information on Otsuka Pharmaceuticals please visit: www.otsuka.co.jp