Senior Data Engineer

MUST BE BASED IN THE UK TO BE ELIGIBLE.

• Job title: Senior Data Engineer
• Location: The Stanley Building, London
• Contract length: 12 months (possibility of extension)
• Contract type: Inside IR35
• Working pattern: Hybrid - two days per week onsite
• Overview

GSK is a science-led global healthcare company with a special purpose: to help people do more, feel better, live longer. We are on an audacious journey to impact the health of 2.5 billion people over the next decade. Our R&D division is at the forefront of this mission, dedicated to the discovery and development of groundbreaking vaccines and medicines. We are transforming the landscape of medical research by integrating cutting-edge science and technology and harnessing the power of genetics and new data. By fostering a collaborative environment that unites the talents of our people, we are revolutionizing R&D to pre-empt and defeat diseases. Join us in our commitment to uniting science, technology, and talent to get ahead of disease together.

Role Overview

At GSK we see a world in which advanced applications of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) will allow us to develop novel therapies for existing diseases and to respond quickly to emerging or changing diseases with personalised drugs, driving better outcomes at reduced cost with fewer side effects. It is an ambitious vision and delivering it will require products and solutions at the cutting edge of Machine Learning and AI. We’re looking for a senior data engineer (contractor) to help us make this vision a reality.

Strong candidates will have a track record of shipping data products derived from complex sources and will have owned that process from initial pipeline design through to production scale. We have a commitment to quality, so successful candidates will be able to use modern cloud tooling and techniques to deliver reliable data pipelines and continuously improve them.

This role calls for in interest in solving hard problems in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and for doing that work collaboratively as part of a team. The successful candidate will make substantial use of AI agents to develop software in this role.

Key Responsibilities

• Build, operate and then automate the pipelines behind our medical imaging data and combine that imaging data (DICOM data) with other data modalities including tabular data.
• Design data storage, transfer and transformation utilities that make it fast to move and harmonise multi-terabyte image datasets on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) by developing standardised onboarding processes with imaging sites and vendors. This includes designing secure inbound and outbound exchange with automated data transfer and Quality Control.
• Handle derived imaging artefacts. Link segmentations and annotations (for example RTSTRUCT, NIfTI) back to their source series and deliver analysis-ready dataset snapshots into the imaging analysis platforms and ML environments for science teams to work with.
• Automate the path for curating and harmonising imaging datasets. Parse and normalise metadata, validate incoming manifests against the agreed metadata standard, reconcile images against clinical/tabular and other biomarker data, and build quality and de-identification checks to replace manual review.
• Write production-grade Python: tested, reviewed, instrumented and documented well enough that the team can run it long-term.
• Work with ML engineers and software engineers to shape datasets around what the models and the science need.
• Work with imaging leads to apply ML and AI techniques to ingestion, including by doing anomaly detection over metadata and series structure, using automated detection of missing, duplicate or mismatched studies, applying classifiers for burned-in pixel PHI, and building agent-driven triage of failed loads.

Minimum Skills and Qualifications

• Strong Python for data engineering, including data transformation, job monitoring and schema management.
• Experience handling large binary/blob datasets in object storage at scale (Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage/ADLS, Amazon S3 or equivalent) in a cloud environment.
• Significant SQL experience, including schema design.
• One of: a PhD in a computational discipline, MSc in computational discipline + 2 years’ experience with imaging data (from any domain), or 2 years’ hands-on experience with medical imaging data (such as DICOM data).
• Experience building and running ETL/ELT pipelines with an orchestration framework.
• Experience with CI/CD, agile software development and DevOps.
• Ability to work with ambiguous requirements and decide on the approach independently.

Preferred Skills and Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with DICOM data; metadata and tags, multi-frame and series structure, de-identification including burned-in pixel PHI, and the standard Python tooling (pydicom, SimpleITK, dcm2niix, DCMTK).
• Deep, practical BigQuery and/or SQL: schema design, partitioning and clustering, query and cost optimisation on large tables.
• Agentic engineering; using coding agents as a day-to-day part of how you build and building agent-driven data workflows.
• Google Cloud; services such as Cloud Run, GKE, Artifact Registry and Cloud SQL.
• Modern columnar and array formats (Parquet, Arrow, Zarr) and thoughtful storage layout for large datasets.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC); ideally Terraform, Docker containers.
• Experience working with sensitive data under GDPR, HIPAA or clinical trial data governance.
• Experience building secure, audited data exchange with external parties like imaging vendors, academic collaborators and Contract Research Organisations, including staging containers, transfer controls and provenance tracking.
• Background in biology, medicine or biomedical data (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, EHR, clinical images).

Why GSK?

Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together.

GSK is a global biopharma company with a special purpose – to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together – so we can positively impact the health of billions of people and deliver stronger, more sustainable shareholder returns – as an organisation where people can thrive. We prevent and treat disease with vaccines, specialty and general medicines. We focus on the science of the immune system and the use of new platform and data technologies, investing in four core therapeutic areas (infectious diseases, HIV, respiratory/ immunology and oncology).

Our success absolutely depends on our people. While getting ahead of disease together is about our ambition for patients and shareholders, it’s also about making GSK a place where people can thrive. We want GSK to be a place where people feel inspired, encouraged and challenged to be the best they can be. A place where they can be themselves – feeling welcome, valued, and included. Where they can keep growing and look after their wellbeing. So, if you share our ambition, join us at this exciting moment in our journey to get Ahead Together.

Inclusion at GSK

GSK is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, pregnancy, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, age, disability, genetic information, military service, covered/protected veteran status or any other federal, state or local protected class.

If you need any adjustments in the recruitment process, please get in touch with our Recruitment team (EMEA-GSKLink@allegisglobalsolutions.com) to further discuss this today.

Important notice to employment businesses/agencies

GSK does not accept referrals from employment businesses and/or employment agencies in respect of the vacancies posted on this site. All employment businesses/agencies are required to contact GSK's commercial and general procurement/human resources department to obtain prior written authorization before referring any candidates to GSK. The obtaining of prior written authorization is a condition precedent to any agreement (verbal or written) between the employment business/ agency and GSK. In the absence of such written authorization being obtained any actions undertaken by the employment business/agency shall be deemed to have been performed without the consent or contractual agreement of GSK. GSK shall therefore not be liable for any fees arising from such actions or any fees arising from any referrals by employment businesses/agencies in respect of the vacancies posted on this site.

Please note that if you are a US Licensed Healthcare Professional or Healthcare Professional as defined by the laws of the state issuing your license, GSK may be required to capture and report expenses GSK incurs, on your behalf, in the event you are afforded an interview for employment. This capture of applicable transfers of value is necessary to ensure GSK’s compliance to all federal and state US Transparency requirements. For more information, please visit GSK’s Transparency Reporting For the Record site.