Platform Engineer - Pathogen

Location: Oxford, England, United Kingdom

Department: Pathogen

Workplace: hybrid

Employment Type: full

Description

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas for lab to society. Explore more at www.eit.org.

Welcome to the Pathogen Project:

Within this ecosystem, the Pathogen Project exemplifies EIT’s dedication to ground-breaking science. It seeks to transform pathogen risk management, detection and response by leveraging Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS)-based metagenomic and pathogen-specific analytical tools. The goal is to power metagenomic devices using long-read sequencing technologies by building a comprehensive database of pathogen information to inform response. Enabled by Oracle Inc.’s cloud-computing scale and security, the Pathogen Project is advancing toward certified diagnostic tools for deployment in laboratories, hospitals, and public health organisations worldwide. 

Your Role:

At EIT we are seeking an experienced and detailed orientated  Platform Engineer to help manage and develop the infrastructure behind our data platform, ensuring it is secure, scalable, and efficient.

Working closely with data engineers and DevSecOps specialists, you’ll support research teams by enabling advanced bioinformatics workflows and cloud-based solutions. This position offers the chance to contribute to a programme focused on improving global health through pathogen genomics and cutting-edge technology.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage object data storage, ensuring efficient design, tiering, and access controls.
• Build and maintain the research compute environment for bioinformatics pipelines and interactive analytics.
• Ensure the data platform complies with disaster recovery standards.
• Manage cloud resources to set standards and automate deployments.
• Collaborate with the AI and Robotics team to contribute to and reuse modular assets using Terraform code models.
• Automate the deployment of tools within the research environment.
• Monitor all platform components for availability, cost, and performance.
• Support R&D activities to test novel approaches and Oracle Cloud usage.
• Support data ingestion from a global network of distributed sequencing devices.
• Maintain platform security in alignment with EIT standards.
• Work with architects and engineers to build optimized data platform components, including genomic variant stores, sequence stores, and pathogen analytics databases.
• Partner with the DevSecOps engineer to automate deployments using a standard toolchain.
• Enable engineers to perform common tasks through automated self-service scripts.
• Support system administration and operations across environments.
• Collaborate with engineers to learn from incidents and implement improvements.

Requirements

Essential Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• Strong hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure, ideally Oracle Cloud, including provisioning, configuration, and service management.
• Ability to automate processes using Terraform and appropriate toolchains.
• In-depth knowledge of containerization technologies (e.g., Docker) and orchestration tools like Kubernetes.
• Solid understanding of cloud security best practices, including IAM, network security, and encryption.
• Experience with Git or other version control systems.

Desirable Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• Certifications in Oracle Cloud (OCI) or other platforms (AWS, GCP).
• Experience with Jira, Confluence, or similar project management tools.
• Knowledge of compliance frameworks and standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, ISO27001, ISO13485).

Key Attributes

• Strong collaboration skills.
• Willingness to learn and cross-train in new technologies.
• Hands-on approach to exploring new technologies and developing POCs.
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to address security challenges critically.
• Effective communication and teamwork abilities, especially in cross-functional teams.
• Ability to manage multiple tasks and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment.
• Attention to detail and commitment to security and quality assurance.
• Flexibility to adapt and contribute to a rapidly scaling organization.

Benefits

We offer the following benefits:

• Enhanced holiday pay
• Pension
• Life Assurance
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance
• Hospital Cash Plan
• Therapy Services
• Perk Box
• Electrical Car Scheme

Working Together – What It Involves:

• You must have the right to work permanently in the UK with a willingness to travel as necessary. In certain cases, we can consider sponsorship, and this will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
• You will live in, or within easy commuting distance of, Oxford (or be willing to relocate).