GBC Biodata Infrastructure Technical Analyst

The Global Biodata Coalition (GBC) brings together leading international funders in biomedical and life sciences research to secure the long-term sustainability of the world’s most essential biodata resources. Hosted by EMBL-EBI and supported by a new five-year European Commission grant and contributions from GBC Member funding organisations, GBC operates at the intersection of science, policy, and global collaboration. A key element of GBC's Scientific Programme is to discover and describe globally distributed biodata resources and their interconnectivity, with a view to engaging stakeholders in the development and evaluation of models for sustainability.

We are looking for a pro-active, broadly skilled Biodata Infrastructure Technical Analyst to grow our operational intelligence base on global biodata infrastructure. You will develop and maintain analytical tools, and deliver analysis using these tools around the discovery, characterisation and usage of global biodata resources. You will report to the GBC Scientific Head.

Your role

As Biodata Infrastructure Technical Analyst, you will be a central member of the GBC team providing foundational evidence for the GBC programme. Particular duties and responsibilities will include:

• Development and maintenance of the body of software used in discovery and analysis of biodata resources and their interconnections

• Management of GBC software repositories and cloud deployment environments

• Maintenance and routine refresh of the GBC Global Inventory of biodata resources

• Usage and other analyses relating both to the GBC's Global Core Biodata Resources and to the broader global biodata infrastructure

• Citation, and citation network, analysis relating to global biodata resources

• Text mining of the scholarly literature and other corpora for the extraction of biodata resource information and evidence of usage

• Engagement and collaboration with external groups that build and maintain tools, services, catalogues, registries and other resources that relate to the delivery of GBC analytics

• Communication verbally and in writing of analytical findings to members of the GBC Secretariat and external stakeholders

You have

• Undergraduate degree in either:

  • software engineering, informatics, computer science, or equivalent

  • life science, with strong computational components

• Leadership of computational projects with responsibility for design, implementation and delivery

• Authorship and maintenance of technical documentation

• Strong Python skills for data cleaning, analysis, and visualisation

• Ability to design reproducible data pipelines and maintain well-documented datasets

• Experience with workflow tools such as Nextflow

• Experience retrieving and integrating data from REST APIs, databases, and public data services

• Strong SQL skills for querying relational databases.

• Experience using AI-assisted coding and workflow tools to support reproducible data analysis, with appropriate human review

• Experience applying machine-learning methods to text classification, named entity recognition, or information extraction

• Experience with Git/GitHub/GitLab

• Experience with cloud platforms, especially Google Cloud

• High attention to detail

• Ability to present analytical findings clearly to technical and non-technical audiences

• A collaborative mindset

• High level of organisation

• Work independently as well as part of a team

You might also have

• Postgraduate qualification in informatics or life science

• Involvement in bioinformatics data analysis

• Work within the life sciences biodata resource ecosystem

• Familiarity with biodata resources, biodata types, accession identifiers, and life-science data repositories

• Experience working with Python notebooks, such as Jupyter or Google Colab

• Experience with dashboarding, reporting, or interactive visualisation tools

• Experience with bibliometrics, citation analysis, or citation-network analysis

• Experience with text mining of scholarly literature, metadata, citations, acknowledgements, or full-text corpora

Contract length: 3 years.

Salary: Grade 5 or 6 monthly salary from £3,452.05 or £3,861.91 after tax plus generous benefits and financial allowances based on personal circumstances. Excluding personal pension and insurance contributions.
 

Interviews: Will be held via virtually over Zoom on Thursday 20th August 2026.

Why join us

Do something meaningful
At EMBL-EBI you can apply your talent and passion to accelerate science and tackle some of humankind's greatest challenges. EMBL-EBI, part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, is a worldwide leader in the storage, analysis and dissemination of large biological datasets. We provide the global research community with access to publicly available databases and tools which are crucial for the advancement of healthcare, food security, and biodiversity.
 

Join a culture of innovation
We are located on the Wellcome Genome Campus, alongside other prominent research and biotech organisations, and surrounded by beautiful Cambridgeshire countryside. This is a highly collaborative and inclusive community where our employees enjoy a relaxed atmosphere. We are committed to ensuring our employees feel valued, supported and empowered to reach their professional potential.  Watch this video to see how EMBL-EBI makes an impact.

Enjoy lots of benefits:

• Financial incentives: Monthly family, child and non-resident allowances, annual salary review, pension scheme, death benefit, long-term care, accident-at-work and unemployment insurances

• Flexible working arrangements - including hybrid working patterns 

• Private medical insurance for you and your immediate family (including all prescriptions and generous dental & optical cover)

• Generous time off: 30 days annual leave per year, in addition public holidays

• Relocation package including installation grant (if required)

• Campus life: Free shuttle bus to and from work, on-site library, subsidised on-site gym and cafeteria, casual dress code, extensive sports and social club activities (on campus and remotely)

• Family benefits: On-site nursery, 10 days of child sick leave, generous parental leave, holiday clubs on campus and monthly family and child allowances

• Benefits for non-UK residents: Visa exemption, education grant for private schooling, financial support to travel back to your home country every second year and a monthly non-resident allowance.

For detailed information please visit our employee benefits page here. 

What else you need to know

• International applicants: We recruit internationally and successful candidates are offered visa exemptions. Please take a look at our International Applicants page for further information.  

• EMBL is a signatory of DORA. Find out how we apply DORA principles to our recruitment and performance assessment processes here.

• Diversity and inclusion: At EMBL, we believe that diverse teams drive innovation and scientific excellence. We encourage applications from candidates of all genders, identities, nationalities and/or any other diverse backgrounds.

• How to apply: To apply please submit a cover letter and a CV through our online system. Applications will close at 23:59 CET on the date shown below. We aim to provide a response within two weeks after the closing date.

Closing Date