Job Description
Oxford Nanopore Technologies is a leading biotechnology company that has revolutionized the field of genetic sequencing. Headquartered at the Oxford Science Park outside Oxford, UK, with satellite offices and a commercial presence in many global locations across the US, APAC and Europe.
The company employs experts from multiple subject areas including nanopore science, molecular biology and applications, informatics, engineering, electronics, manufacturing and commercialisation. The management team, led by CEO Dr Gordon Sanghera, has a track record of delivering disruptive technologies to the market.
Oxford Nanopore's sequencing platform is the only technology that offers real-time analysis, in fully scalable formats from pocket to population scale, that can analyse native DNA or RNA and sequence any length of fragment to achieve short to ultra-long read lengths. Our goal is to enable the analysis of any living thing, by anyone, anywhere.
We are seeking an experienced software engineer to join our Manufacturing Tracking (MT) team. This role will involve optimising ONT's systems for driving manufacturing processes and for collecting device telemetry data for analysis. You will work closely with three other software engineers in the MT team to achieve this goal.
This role is a hybrid position, requiring you to work from home for most of the time, but meeting in the office once a week to plan the upcoming sprint. We value flexibility and autonomy in our employees, and encourage them to take ownership of their work.
About the Manufacturing Tracking Team:
We are a team of four experienced software engineers who sit within the Operational Systems Engineering department in Global IT. Our mission is to optimise manufacturing efficiency and reliable capture of device telemetry across ONT. We collaborate with data engineers and software engineers from across the business to achieve this goal.
We build several systems to fulfil our mission, including:
* Sawtooth suite: Three Django/Flask/React applications for manufacturing operators to track their manufacturing sessions.
* Orca: A highly-available Flask API for receiving telemetry data from all our genetic sequencing devices across the world.
* Equipment Management Registry: A Django application for tracking the maintenance of equipment.
* End to End Data Transfer: A batch processing system for receiving and importing data from third party suppliers.
We are looking for candidates who have significant experience of server-side programming and fluency with collaborating on code in a Git-based hosting platform. Beyond that, we value individuals who are well suited to carry out the following key responsibilities of this role:
* Easily develop & deliver improvements to our systems to support business needs:
o Develop our Python- and React-based webapps and API services through GitLab merge requests.
o Maintain and improve the MySQL database data, schemas and structures.
o Evolve the GitLab deployment pipelines, Kubernetes manifests and AWS resources.
o Provide second-line support for our systems, working directly with our internal user base.
o Design careful and targeted solutions to important business problems.
o Suggest and drive efficiency improvements by writing tests, optimising repository settings and introducing metrics & dashboards.
* Improve our team's spirit, sense of purpose and efficiency:
o Uphold and enhance our team values, standards and practices.
o Define, estimate, prioritise and track work in prioritisation meetings and beyond.
o Create and manage clear, informative Jira tickets to track agreed work.
o Improve our team documentation, working practices and code standards.
o Engage in team retrospectives to drive further improvements.
o Collaboratively enhance code quality through code reviews.
o Engage with diverse stakeholders from across the organisation to define targeted improvements to meet ONT's strategic goals:
o Drive requirements-gathering meetings and important discussions in Slack and Jira.
o Lead initiatives from kick-off to delivery.
We use a variety of technologies and services, including:
Jira; Confluence; Slack
Python; JavaScript; Typescript
Django; Flask; React
MySQL; MongoDB Atlas
Gitlab repositories, merge requests & CI pipelines; Kubernetes manifests, Kustomize & kubectl
AWS infrastructure: EC2 instances; Lambdas; EKS; ECR; S3; EFS; VPC networking and security groups
We care more about your ability to perform the role's responsibilities than your expertise in specific technologies. Our team engages with problems to understand the context and then design appropriate, effective solutions in an environment where priorities and requirements can change significantly over time.
We prioritise openness and clear communication, and all contribute to the evolution of the team through honest feedback and regular retrospectives. We are looking for someone who shares these values, is enthusiastic about sharing their insight to help meet our challenges, and will be engaged in our working environment.
We offer outstanding benefits to include an attractive bonus, generous pension contributions, private healthcare and an excellent starting salary. Based within beautiful, landscaped surroundings with tree-lined walks, water features and a lake, all of which make for a wonderful working environment.
If you are looking to utilise your skills to really make a difference to humankind, then consider joining our team.
Please note that no terminology in this advert is intended to discriminate on the grounds of a person's gender, marital status, race, religion, colour, age, disability or sexual orientation. Every candidate will be assessed only in accordance with their merits, qualifications and abilities to perform the duties of the job.