Genomics England is a global leader in enabling genomic medicine and research, focused on creating a world where everyone benefits from genomic healthcare. Building on the 100,000 Genomes Project, we support the NHS’s world-first national whole genome sequencing service and run the growing National Genomic Research Library, alongside delivering numerous major genomics initiatives. By connecting research and clinical care at national scale, we enable immediate healthcare benefits and advances for the future.
Our mission is to provide the evidence and digital systems so that by 2035 genomics could play a role in up to half of all healthcare interactions, whilst securing the UK’s position as the best place to discover, prove and benefit from genomic innovations.
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.
Behind the Healthcare and Research outcomes, Genomics England delivers through designing, developing and operating complex healthcare software systems.
We're on the cusp of big changes with the real prospect of genomics becoming the fabric of everyday healthcare through the lifetime - from birth to old age.
Solution Architect
We’re seeking an accomplished Solution Architect to shape how Genomics England designs healthcare solutions.
This senior role reports to the Director of Architecture within the Technology and Product Directorate and puts you at the heart of defining the future of genomic healthcare solutions, fully aligned with our technology strategy and architecture vision.
In this critical role, you will act as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders, guiding projects and influencing the design and confident delivery of enterprise-scale healthcare solutions. You will support squads, products, and services to adopt best practices across solution design, data lifecycle management, data governance, metadata management, interoperability, integration, and analytics, while contributing to industry standards such as GA4GH or FHIR and helping to ensure Genomics England remains at the forefront of genomic healthcare and research.
Key Responsibilities:
Lead the architecture, design and implementation of genomic healthcare solutions, ensuring data flows, integration points and platform choices support safe, scalable and effective service delivery.
Serve as a subject matter expert for genomic healthcare architecture, guiding both tactical and strategic decisions.
Communicate architecture strategy and roadmaps clearly to senior stakeholders, demonstrating how these support service, product, and organisational goals.
Collaborate with technology partners, vendors and NHS stakeholders to inform roadmaps and influence end-to-end solutions.
Contribute to national and international standards relevant to healthcare, genomics and research, including GA4GH or FHIR.
Collaborate with cross-functional teams—including bioinformaticians, data architect and data scientists, clinicians, data engineers and product managers—to ensure solutions meet business, data, security and regulatory requirements; and are deliverable within the constraints of skills, resources and budget.
Architect solutions that integrate cloud platforms, data services and analytics capabilities—such as AWS HealthOmics, HPC compute nodes and sequence stores—with complex on-premise estates, supporting petabyte-scale storage, high-performance compute and trusted access to genomic and healthcare data.
Develop reusable architecture patterns for solution design, data integration, metadata management and analytics to streamline delivery and enable rapid innovation in genomics and healthcare services.
Ensure solution designs make appropriate use of data products, interoperability standards, lineage, governance and reusable platform capabilities.
Provide architectural oversight for major healthcare and genomics programmes, ensuring technical excellence and continuous improvement.
Foster a culture of collaboration, technical excellence, and inclusive innovation across teams.
Essential Skills and Experience:
Proven experience designing and implementing cloud enterprise-scale architectures in a complex healthcare, genomics or life sciences environment.
In-depth knowledge of genomics, bioinformatics and healthcare data standards, including expertise with GA4GH, FHIR or other relevant industry standards.
Strong experience engaging with senior stakeholders to influence and implement long-term architectural strategy.
Expertise in documenting, communicating, and implementing roadmaps and solutions across a wide landscape, including data flows, integrations, platforms and dependencies.
Excellent interpersonal skills and a temperament that builds trust across technical and non-technical teams.
Ability to balance strategic and tactical considerations in architecture decisions.
Knowledge of cloud and hybrid data architectures, data platforms, data products, metadata management, interoperability patterns, and data warehouses.
Extensive knowledge of AWS cloud architecture and technologies that support genomics/healthcare such as HealthLake and HealthOmics.
Desirable Skills and Experience:
Postgraduate qualification in genomics, bioinformatics or a related field; or extensive equivalent experience.
Relevant certifications in architecture.
Experience applying TOGAF methodologies or equivalent enterprise architecture practices.
Extensive knowledge of bioinformatics, genomic data structures and integration standards for these.
If you're an experienced Solution Architect who thrives on shaping architecture strategy and delivering enterprise scale healthcare solutions, this is your opportunity to make a genuine impact at Genomics England.
BSc in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent industry experience
Relevant architecture or data certifications are desirable; TOGAF certification is highly value
Salary From:
£96,300
Closing Date:
Monday 24th August @ 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, plus additional leave for long service, and also 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 undermines our mission and core values and diminishes the dignity, respect and integrity of all parties. Our People policies outline our commitment to inclusivity.
We aim to remove barriers in our recruitment processes and to be flexible with our interview processes. Should you require any adjustments that may help you to fully participate in the recruitment process, we encourage you to discuss this with us.
Culture
We have four key behaviours that represent what we would like Genomics England to feel like and the culture we want to encourage, in order for us to achieve our mission. These behaviours help us all work well together, deliver on our outcomes, celebrate our successes and share feedback with each other. You can read about these and other aspects of our culture here
Culture | Genomics England
Blended working model
Genomics England operates a blended working model as we know our people appreciate the flexibility that hybrid working can bring. We expect most people to come into the office a minimum of 2 times each month. However, this will vary according to role and will be agreed with your team leader. There is no expectation that people will return to the office full time unless they want to, however, some of our roles require full time on site attendance e.g., lab teams, reception team.
Our teams and squads have, and will continue to reflect on what works best for them to work together successfully and have the freedom to design working patterns to suit, beyond the minimum. Our office locations are: Canary Wharf, Cambridge and Leeds.
Onboarding background checks
As part of our recruitment process, all successful candidates are subject to a Standard Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. We therefore require applicants to disclose any previous offences at point of application, as some unspent convictions may mean we are unable to proceed with your application due to the nature of our work in healthcare.