BACKGROUND:
An exciting new opportunity has arisen within S-CORT, a consortium recently funded by the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research-UK to further investigate stratification in colorectal cancer and to develop clinical stratifiers to aid clinical management.

This post will be located in the Bioinformatics Core in the Department of Oncology and the project will be overseen by the investigators: Professors Maughan (clinical), Tomlinson (genetics) and Holmes (statistics).

The role will lead the database development for the S-CORT Consortium, notably database schema and web front-end design, and where appropriate for the infrastructure for the Bioinformatics Core and frameworks for high-throughput data processing and integration. The role will also involve maintenance of the S-CORT high-performance computing cluster, storage and backup systems, databases, web servers and web applications and provide technical assistance to the Consortium and where appropriate to the core.

This is a diverse role, and will involve contributing to database and software development projects at all stages of their lifecycle.

This is a full-time post and is offered for a fixed-term of 3 years in the first instance.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Rapidly gain an in-depth understanding of the nature and complexities of the high-throughput data modalities generated by the S-CORT Consortium
• Deliver the outlined applications and services and underlying infrastructure required to support them, from servers through to operating systems and databases up to web and application servers. This will include:
  
  • Set up, configure and administer the S-CORT scientific and operational databases, for storage, analysis and controlled remote access of multi-dimensional data including sequence, transcriptome, methylation, phenotypic and clinical demographic and outcome data.
  • Investigate novel and effective methods to explore and analyse these data by developing novel web software with sophisticated visualisation tools.
  • Liaise with end users (clinicians, geneticists, statisticians and administrators) about their requirements. This will involve technical challenges, because of the complexity of the data, and the collaborative nature of the project, as the end product (e.g. database) needs to be highly user friendly and useful to the community of researchers and clinicians as a whole.
  • Work closely with the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL to facilitate flawless and secure integration of clinical and experimental data.
  • Ensure that agreed deadlines are met by the Consortium
• Provide continuous monitoring of all hardware and services to ensure as little downtime as possible and to ensure the on-going integrity of core data assets.
• Deploy, monitor and maintain scientific web applications and services. It will be necessary to develop and define procedures and policies to ensure that all applications are robust and secure, and that roll-out of new versions and recovery from failure is handled as smoothly as possible.
• Set up and configure Apache servers, deploy Web applications and implement Web security. Manage Drupal-based or similar CMS.
• Set up, configure and manage Linux-based operating systems.
• Provide information systems training in programming and software expertise to team members as required.
• Contribute to the Core's infrastructure strategy, continually looking for and implementing new ways to increase efficiency.
• Be involved in elements of hardware procurement, installation and configuration.

REQUIREMENTS:

• A PhD in a relevant subject area such as computer science or bioinformatics
• Evidence of a high level of competence in one or more of Java, C/C#, Perl, PHP and Python; including the use of one or more of these languages to develop or make a significant contribution to a software/database application that has had a commercial or scientific impact.
• Demonstrable project management experience for the planning, development, roll-out, and support of software systems.
• Evidence of the ability to communicate project plans and status to an extended multidisciplinary team of stakeholders.
• Proven expertise in web application programming techniques from the underlying transport protocols (HTTP, SSL), through application protocols (SOAP, JSON, MIME, WebDAV), through presentation languages (HTML, CSS), and onwards to interactive web technologies (DHTML, AJAX).
• Excellent database programming skills, including evidence of software development which integrates data from heterogeneous database management system (DBMS) storage systems.
• Practical experience in loading and querying data using structured query language (SQL) syntax.
• Experience of database administration (ideally MySQL and PostgreSQL).
• Experience of web server administration and web application deployment, including design and configuration of web servers for applications requiring authentication, authorisation and secure communication.
• Experience in modern software design documentation techniques such as Unified Modelling Language (UML) diagramming, use case modelling, and system and software interaction diagrams. Excellent record-keeping skills and experience in preparation of detailed software requirement specifications (SRS) documents.
• Significant professional experience of Linux operating systems administration.
• Experience of systems under significant computational load (e.g., clustering of servers and/or storage).
• Experience in administering storage infrastructure.
• Evidence of the ability to work unsupervised and also to contribute as an effective member of the team.
• A proven disciplined and professional approach to work.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, with the ability to work with people at all levels of seniority in the University.
• Good communication skills with excellent spoken and written English.

LOCALE:
Oxford, UK

COMPENSATION:
Grade 8: GBP 38,511 - GBP 45,954 per annum

HOW TO APPLY:
Please go to : https://www.recruit.ox.ac.uk/pls/hrisliverecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.display_form?p_display_in_irish=N&p_company=10&p_refresh_search=Y&p_process_type=&p_recruitment_id=119114&p_form_profile_detail=&p_display_apply_ind=Y&p_internal_external=E&p_applicant_no=

DEADLINE:
The closing date for applications is 12.00 noon on 6 August 2015