National AI Awards 2025Discover AI's trailblazers! Join us to celebrate innovation and nominate industry leaders.

Nominate & Attend

Principal Engineer - Site Reliability / SRE (we have office locations in Cambridge, Leeds & London)

London
1 month ago
Applications closed

Related Jobs

View all jobs

High Value Manufacturing Senior / Principal Mechanical Engineer

Electrical Design Engineer

Electrical Design Engineer

Electrical Design Engineer

Design Engineering Manager

Mechanical Engineering Manager

Company Description

Genomics England partners with the NHS to provide whole genome sequencing diagnostics. We also equip researchers to find the causes of disease and develop new treatments – with patients and participants at the heart of it all.

Our mission is to continue refining, scaling, and evolving our ability to enable others to deliver genomic healthcare and conduct genomic research.

We are accelerating our impact and working with patients, doctors, scientists, government and industry to improve genomic testing, and help researchers access the health data and technology they need to make new medical discoveries and create more effective, targeted medicines for everybody.

Job Description

Are you passionate about helping to mature technical practices and empowering teams to run resilient and reliable services? At Genomics England we are looking for a Principal Site Reliability Engineer to help lead and refocus our small SRE capability, ultimately growing it to become thought-leaders in system reliability across the organisation.

About the Role

As the Principal Site Reliability Engineer, you will be a hands-on contributor with exemplary platform engineering skills, who also has an ability to lead and think strategically to identify and prioritise areas with the greatest impact. You may have previously worked in a variety or roles and job titles within engineering, and you may have worked in a variety of organisational contexts. Whatever your past experience, it will have given you a deep understanding of SRE principles and practices and how these are used to build and operate reliable services that exceed customer expectations.

You will be a problem-solver who identifies risks, issues, gaps, and dependencies and brings people together to find solutions. You will do this through your supportive, empathetic and collaborative behaviours - acting as coach, mentor, guide or constructive questioner as the situation demands. You are pragmatic but also mindful of the big picture - consciously balancing the immediate goals of teams against the long-term direction for their products. You will be a great communicator, comfortable not just leading your own team, but also engaging across the engineering community and with non-technical stakeholders.

About the Tech Stack

The SRE team will support squads that run a variety of services: most of these are either user-facing web applications (React), backend APIs (Python), bioinformatics pipelines (NextFlow), or data ETL workflows (Prefect, Dremio). These services increasingly run in AWS, though there is still a significant on-premise presence, and they run in a mixture of compute environments, from ECS/Fargate to HPC clusters to (occasionally) Kubernetes.

Within the SDLC we have a standard toolchain which includes Terraform for infrastructure-as-code, GitLab for source code and CI/CD, Artifactory for software artefacts, and DataDog for observability. We are working to become interoperable with the wider NHS via open standards like FHIR and GA4GH APIs and increasingly aiming to integrate with their own API Management platform.

Job Description

Assess the current state of human and technical processes and practices from a site reliability perspective, and identify the areas of greatest concern
Develop a roadmap of initiatives aimed at raising the maturity of live services through SRE practices (SLOs, Critical User Journeys, monitoring with Golden Signals, release-engineering etc.)
Grow and lead a small team of Site Reliability Engineers to roll out those initiatives across the organisation through partnership with product squads
Work with key stakeholders to establish and embed key SRE principles (e.g. Error Budget Policies)
Maintain close contact with Engineering leadership and other "enabling" teams (Test Enablement, Developer Platform) to ensure that SRE work is fully aligned with our direction of travel
Stay abreast of emerging technologies and industry trends, and incorporate them into our software development practices
Contribute to the wider conversation at Genomics England and help mature our technical practicesQualifications

While we recognise the value of relevant qualifications or certifications, we are primarily interested in your real-world experience.

Essential Skills and Experience

Comprehensive knowledge of SRE principles and practices with significant experience of applying these to real-world situations
Excellent software engineering skills especially in the context of release automation and other toil-eliminating activities (Python preferred, polyglot ideal)
Strong understanding of how architecture and other factors contribute to the overall resilience of systems
Extensive experience of platform engineering across CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, operational monitoring and alerting, backup and recovery etc.
Experience in at least one major public cloud (AWS preferred but not essential)
Demonstrable ability to lead teams, manage, direct, mentor and plan work 
Strong interpersonal skills with a temperament that builds trust and connection within and across squads through open, honest communication
Comfortable engaging responsively with teams both remotely and in person when required
Ability to navigate rapidly to effective solutions through engaged and inclusive listening, clarity of thought, clear documentation, and succinct presentationDesirable Experience

These skills are not essential but if you have either of them they may prove to be useful:

Background in healthcare or bioinformatics
Experience in regulated environmentsIf you’re an experienced Site Reliability Engineer leader, who thrives on working collaboratively to mature engineering practices, we’d love to hear from you. Join us at Genomics England and make a meaningful impact in the world of genomics.

Qualifications

While we recognise the value of relevant qualifications or certifications, we are primarily interested in your real-world experience.

Additional Information

Salary: £103,500

Closing Date: Sunday 15th June at 23:00 (UK time)

Being an integral part of such a meaningful mission is extremely rewarding in itself, but in order to support our people, we’re continually improving our benefits package. We pride ourselves on investing in our people and supporting them to achieve their career goals, as well as offering a benefits package including: 

Generous Leave: 30 days’ holiday plus bank holidays, additional leave for long service, and the option to apply for up to 30 days of remote working abroad annually (approval required).
Family-Friendly: Blended working arrangements, flexible working, enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave benefits.
Pension & Financial: Defined contribution pension (Genomics England double-matches up to 10%, however you can contribute more if you wish), Life Assurance (3x salary), and a Give As You Earn scheme.
Learning & Development: Individual learning budgets, support for training and certifications, and reimbursement for one annual professional subscription (approval required).
Recognition & Rewards: Employee recognition programme and referral scheme.
Health & Wellbeing: Subsidised gym membership, a free Headspace account, and access to an Employee Assistance Programme, eye tests, flu jabs.Equal opportunities and our commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace 

Genomics England is actively committed to providing and supporting an inclusive environment that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion best practice both within our community and in any other area where we have influence. We are proud of our diverse community where everyone can come to work and feel welcomed and treated with respect regardless of any disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, or social background. 

Genomics England’s policies of non-discrimination and equity and will be applied fairly to all people, regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, being pregnant or recently becoming a parent, race, religion or beliefs, sex or sexual orientation, length of service, whether full or part-time or employed under a permanent or a fixed-term contract or any other relevant factor.  

Genomics England does not tolerate any form of discrimination, harassment, victimisation or bullying at work. Such behaviour is contrary to

National AI Awards 2025

Subscribe to Future Tech Insights for the latest jobs & insights, direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service.

Industry Insights

Discover insightful articles, industry insights, expert tips, and curated resources.

Biotech Jobs Salary Calculator 2025: Pinpoint Your True Worth in the UK Life‑Sciences Market

Why yesterday’s salary guide won’t cut it in today’s biotech landscape “Could I earn more elsewhere?” Every life‑sciences professional has whispered that question—perhaps after seeing a colleague jump to a new start‑up for a chunky raise, or hearing that a peer at a rival pharma company pocketed a surprise bonus. Yet finding a credible benchmark in biotechnology is harder than ever. The sector morphs daily: gene‑therapy breakthroughs spawn new manufacturing lines, government funds pour into north‑of‑England cell‑&‑gene hubs, & Covid‑era mRNA expertise now permeates vaccine, oncology, & even agritech pipelines. Pay bands move with each development; a salary survey printed last year is already a museum piece. To clear the fog, BiotechnologyJobs.co.uk has reverse‑engineered a straightforward, three‑factor formula that estimates an accurate 2025 salary for UK‑based biotech professionals in seconds. Feed in your role, your region, & your seniority, and you’ll have a solid figure to anchor your next pay review or job‑offer negotiation. This article spells out the formula, spotlights the forces driving wages upward, & lays out practical steps to boost your market value over the next 90 days.

How to Present Biotech Concepts to Non-Scientists: A Public Speaking Guide for Job Seekers

In today’s biotechnology job market, your ability to explain complex science clearly is just as important as your lab skills. Whether you're applying for a research role, pitching to investors, or collaborating with marketing teams, you'll often need to present technical information to people without a scientific background. This blog explores how biotechnology job seekers can develop and deliver compelling presentations that make sense to non-scientists. From structuring your content to designing effective slides and using storytelling to bring data to life, these techniques will help you stand out in interviews and on the job.

Biotech Jobs Employer Hotlist 2025: 50 UK Companies Actively Hiring Right Now 

Bookmark this guide – we refresh it every quarter so you always know who’s really expanding their life‑science teams. The UK biotechnology scene is on a tear in 2025. Venture & follow‑on funding hit £3.5 billion last year, up 94 % on 2023, and Q1 2025 alone brought in another £924 million of equity for scaling therapeutics, diagnostics & deep‑tech platforms  bioindustry.org. Meanwhile, Westminster’s new industrial strategy pledges a record £86 billion for science & tech, with life sciences top of the eight “high‑growth” priority sectors . The consequence? Hiring is white‑hot. From big‑pharma giants to gene‑editing start‑ups, employers need research scientists, QC analysts, bioprocess engineers, bioinformaticians, regulatory specialists & commercial leads – right now. Below you’ll find 50 organisations that have posted UK vacancies or announced head‑count growth during the past eight weeks. They’re grouped into five bite‑size categories so you can jump straight to the type of employer – & mission – that excites you. For every entry you’ll see: Main UK hub Example recent vacancy Why it’s worth your time (tech, culture, impact) Use the internal search on BiotechnologyJobs.co.uk to pull up live roles, or set a free alert so fresh openings land in your inbox.