£38,219 – £45,000SeniorFull Time
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 seeking to recruit a passionate DevOps Developer to join our team in developing the infrastructure that enhances the efficiency of our software development lifecycle. You will support the world’s key cancer genomics resource, COSMIC (Catalogue of Somatic Mutations of Cancer)
About the Role:
The role contributes to the design and implementation of reliable, scalable, and infrastructure-agnostic deployment pipelines, ensuring high service availability and minimal downtime. Under the guidance of the Senior Software Developer, the postholder will support CI/CD processes, containerisation, monitoring, observability, and the ongoing operation of COSMIC products.
About You:
You must be a skilled and passionate DevOps developer. You will care about writing clean, high quality, readable and maintainable code to support our growing suite of products.
You must be a good communicator and be able to understand the goals and aims of the collaborative COSMIC team and its customers of researchers, scientists, and clinicians, globally.
The DevOps Developer will play an important role within COSMIC, working closely with Software Developers (web and data), Product Management, and a Senior Developer who will provide technical direction and mentorship.
You will contribute to the deployment and maintenance of COSMIC's enterprise-level infrastructure, helping to implement reliable, clean, and infrastructure-agnostic deployment pipelines with minimal service downtime. Under guidance, you will take hands-on responsibility for CI/CD, containerisation, monitoring, observability, and ongoing maintenance of COSMIC's products.
You will have practical experience across core DevOps technologies including Docker, CI/CD, Kubernetes, Logging, and hybrid cloud environments spanning internal infrastructure and external cloud providers such as AWS.
Working within this stack, you will contribute to sustaining and improving architectures that support:
A globally resilient, scalable, and secure multi-site web presence serving tens of thousands of users worldwide
Hybrid deployment strategies balancing internal infrastructure with cloud-based resilience
Continued support for both existing and emerging COSMIC products and their dependent infrastructure
This role offers excellent scope to develop your skills across a modern, high-traffic infrastructure stack with the support of an experienced team. You will be part of a multidisciplinary, committed team working on products that directly advance cancer research and make a real difference to patients around the world.
Essential Technical Skills:
Experience with CI/CD — authoring, maintaining, and evolving pipelines for automated build, test, and deployment workflows
Proficiency with Docker — building images, managing containers, and maintaining compose-based or orchestrated deployments in production
Experience deploying and managing services on Internal/External virtual machine infrastructure
Experience with Kubernetes for container orchestration, including cluster management, scaling, and service configuration
Experience configuring load balancers and traffic management solutions (e.g. NGINX, or equivalent)
Knowledge of monitoring, alerting, logging and observability
Strong Unix/Linux systems knowledge and proficiency in Bash scripting for automation and operational tasks
Essential Competencies and Behaviours
A demonstrable, enthusiastic, can-do, learn, proactive attitude
Enthusiasm, commitment and attention to detail
Ability to prioritise activities and manage the own workload independently
Ability to explain technical issues effectively and understandably to non-technical users
Ability to work collaboratively with a range of stakeholders at all levels
Ability to understand scientific and technical challenges
Excellent, broad-based and self-reliant problem-solving skills
Shows curiosity and a willingness to learn new technologies, tools, and ways of working
Adjusts to changing requirements, priorities, or technical approaches
Welcomes feedback from peers and seniors
Collaborates effectively with team members and contributes to shared goals
About Us:
COSMIC is the key information source in global human cancer research and is growing rapidly in content, scope, and value. This role is due to the evolution and expansion of our web services and products to enable this growth. We make a real difference to scientific research and to cancer patients around the world.
We provide excellent opportunities to apply best practices in software development, writing clean code and taking a test-driven development approach.
COSMIC data is gathered from a variety of sources, from manual curation to structured repositories into our databases. This position will help provide new websites, generate interactive visualisations of curation data. More about COSMIC here.
Other Information:
Application Process:
As part of your application, please:
1. Upload your CV
2. Complete the following application form: https://forms.gle/QusxBu3CCJAx6Qy96
To ensure your application is considered, please complete all screening questions; incomplete submissions will be automatically declined.
Salary per annum: £38,219 - £45,000 Role Profile
Software Developer job family: Grade 3
Contract Type: 3 years Fixed Term Contract
Recruitment Process: Shortlisting w/c 4th May, Screening interview w/c 11th May, Campus Interviews w/c 25th May or w/c 1st June
Closing date: 3rd May 2026
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.
