Associate Director, Data Engineering

About the Company

Relation is a sector-defining TechBio company developing transformational medicines. We leverage single-cell multi-omics, functional assays, and machine learning to discover therapies for devastating diseases, integrating state-of-the-art wet and dry labs in London.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the unified data platform strategy in partnership with Labs, Engineering, Data Science, and Machine Learning teams
• Treat the data platform as a product to meet the needs of engineers and scientists
• Lead, hire, and develop a high-performing team of Data Engineers
• Manage end-to-end data flow from lab instruments to information processing systems
• Optimize and oversee scientific compute pipelines using Nextflow and Seqera Platform
• Enforce data governance standards and ensure all information assets follow FAIR principles
• Drive operational excellence through CI/CD, ETL testing frameworks, and production-grade SDKs
• Own the data infrastructure security posture

Requirements

• Background in bioinformatics or data engineering within interdisciplinary technical teams
• Familiarity with cloud systems (AWS/GCP/Azure), Kubernetes, and orchestration frameworks like Nextflow or Dagster
• Advanced programming skills in Python or Rust
• Experience shipping scalable, well-tested code in data-intensive or scientific research environments
• Strong cross-functional coordination skills to bridge wet lab and computational science requirements
• Understanding of data governance frameworks and FAIR data principles
• Knowledge of software engineering best practices and "Platform as a Product" thinking

Preferred Qualifications

• Exposure to compliance frameworks such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, or GDPR in a biotech context