Senior Platform Engineer

Do you want to help us improve human health and understand life on Earth? Make your mark by shaping the future to enable or deliver life-changing science to solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges.

We are looking for a permanent Senior Platform Engineer to maintain and improve our existing internal development platform (IDP). This platform hosts the services that enable the genomic surveillance of pathogens at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

About The Role

As a Senior Platform Engineer, you will work with data scientists, Quality Assurance (QA) & bioinformaticians to maintain and extend GSU’s IDP. The platform utilises Sanger OpenStack private cloud infrastructure to provide production and non-production Kubernetes clusters managed through IaC. The role further includes;

• Active cost control, updates and patching of a modest AWS and GCP cloud environment and accounts,
• Scheduled reactive security scanning of public-facing services, and increasing use of proactive DevSecOps tooling with subsequent triage, and patching of identified vulnerabilities,
• Supporting data engineering and bioinformatics teams adopting DevSecOps practices, though a combination of implementation, internal consultation, documentation, training and tool evaluation,
• Design, build, and test via Proofs of Concept (POC) to evaluate tools, utilities, and new services at Sanger (historical examples include SSO providers, credential management, Loki/Elastic Search & GPU’s),
• Scheduled maintenance and updates to GSU platform infrastructure,
• Completing a rehost, replatform or retirement program of legacy services to manage cost, risk and complexity (expected to complete in next 6 months)
• Suppprting the creation of quarterly OKRS to help structure the team's work aligned to declared business and technology strategies.

About Us

One of the biggest challenges in the battle against infectious disease is that pathogens are continually evolving. Genomic surveillance involves sequencing the genetic material of pathogenic microbes and their vectors so that evolutionary changes that affect transmission, disease severity and susceptibility to treatment can be observed. The goal of the Wellcome Sanger Institute’s Genomic Surveillance Unit (GSU) is to enable the use of genomic surveillance as a practical tool for infectious disease control and pandemic preparedness.

About You

You are a Platform Engineer with experience of working directly with domain experts (preferably scientists or engineers) and their management. You have excellent written and spoken communication with the ability to explain technical challenges and options to stakeholders. You are seeking a role where the work has a tangible, positive, real-world impact.

Essential Skills

• Experience of DevOps and Agile principles
• Professional knowledge of ‘infrastructure as code’ technologies, we use principally Terraform & occasionally Packer, and for configuration management use Ansible, however, experience gained through puppet, Chef and/or SaltStack is applicable
• Knowledge of container orchestration and package management, through Kubernetes & Helm
• Linux system administration skills, typically on Debian based distributions
• Experience of Cloud based technologies and management, we use OpenStack (with Rancher), and maintain a modest AWS & Google footprint
• Knowledge and experience with modern software development practices, including version control, continuous integration and containerisation tools, we use Gitlab, Github & Docker
• Experience of operational cybersecurity principles and associated solutions, we utilise technologies including Semgrep, Trivy, cert-manager & Kyverno to support this
• Maintenance and investigation of incidents through logging, we use ELK stack & Loki, however, experience gained through Splunk, Greylog and/or Fluentd is applicable.
• Familiarity with SQL and relational databases
• Management and configuration of any web server technologies, we use Apache and nginx predominantly
• Familiarity with monitoring tools we use Grafana, Thanos, Prometheus, and alert manager
• Familiarity with data storage and caching technologies, we use Redis

Other Information

Salary range in the region of: £57,000 to £68,000 (dependent upon skills and experience)

Hybrid/flexible working: minimum 2 days in the office

Application Process

Please apply with your CV and a Cover Letter outlining how you meet the criteria above.

Closing Date

7th July 2025

Hybrid Working At Wellcome Sanger

We recognise that there are many benefits to Hybrid Working; including an improved work-life balance, with more focused time, as well as the ability to organise working time so that collaborative opportunities and team discussions are facilitated on campus. The hybrid working arrangement will vary for different roles and teams. The nature of your role and the type of work you do will determine if a hybrid working arrangement is possible.

Equality, Diversity And Inclusion

We aim to attract, recruit, retain and develop talent from the widest possible talent pool, thereby gaining insight and access to different markets to generate a greater impact on the world. We have a supportive culture with the following staff networks, LGBTQ+, Parents and Carers, Disability and Race Equity to bring people together to share experiences, offer specific support and development opportunities and raise awareness. The networks are also a place for allies to provide support to others.

We want our people to be whoever they want to be because we believe people who bring their best selves to work, do their best work. That’s why we’re committed to creating a truly inclusive culture at Sanger Institute. We will consider all individuals without discrimination and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees, where everyone can thrive.

Our Benefits

We are proud to deliver an awarding campus-wide employee wellbeing strategy and programme. The importance of good health and adopting a healthier lifestyle and the commitment to reduce work-related stress is strongly acknowledged and recognised at Sanger Institute.

Sanger Institute became a signatory of the International Technician Commitment initiative In March 2018. The Technician Commitment aims to empower and ensure visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability for technicians working in higher education and research, across all disciplines.