Main Purpose of the Job

The Lead Architect for BioFAIR is responsible for defining and guiding the technical vision, architectural strategy, and design principles for a national, federated life‑science digital research infrastructure. This position blends aspects of systems architecture and solutions architecture, ensuring BioFAIR creates coherent, interoperable, sustainable, and FAIR-aligned services, delivered by distributed UK partners, that can be embedded in a variety of different life sciences settings.

This role requires technical leadership, unambiguous decision-making, and strong communication across multiple independent teams and stakeholder groups. The Lead Architect accelerates and supports the work of delivery partners by ensuring BioFAIR’s architecture is robust, resilient and loosely coupled, and BioFAIR’s technology is interoperable, easy to integrate, and aligned with long-term research‑infrastructure goals. BioFAIR is trying to build a collaborative network of expertise across the UK, so the Lead Architect must also be able to listen to the needs of delivery partners, adapt to changing requirements, and respond quickly and decisively to adapt the BioFAIR architecture and technology as appropriate.

The ideal person for this role brings clear, confident architectural judgement, an ability to make complex ideas understandable, and the calm authority to guide diverse partners toward coherent technical decisions. They combine systems-level rigour with user-focused pragmatism, build trust quickly, and foster collaboration across institutions. They recognise that in collaborative projects, architecture must be socio-technical: the team structures and the services they deliver are two sides of the same coin. Adaptable and intellectually curious, they mentor others generously and help create a shared sense of direction within a distributed, multi-stakeholder environment.

Key Relationships

•    Distributed Consortium Partners: Provides architectural leadership, drives consensus, and resolves technical disputes across partner institutions.
•    Engineering and RSE Teams: Mentors and guides teams on best practices to build production-quality services.
•    Architectural Groups: Leads architectural governance processes, including chairing working groups, keeping focus on emerging priorities, and making timely decisions.
•    Stakeholders (Technical and Non-Technical): Communicates complex architectural concepts with exceptional clarity to diverse audiences.
•    UK and International Communities: Represents BioFAIR to ensure alignment with emerging standards and community practices.
•    BioFAIR Delivery Team: Works with the BioFAIR Hub and delivery partners to align the architecture with long-term research-infrastructure goals.

Main Activities & Responsibilities

Percentage

Architectural Vision & Design 
•    Define and maintain the architectural vision for BioFAIR, blending systems-architecture (infrastructure, interoperability, integration patterns) and solutions‑architecture (use-case alignment, user needs, workflow enablement).
•    Establish core design patterns for APIs, identifiers, metadata, data-flow orchestration, registries, and workflows.
•    Ensure architectural consistency across infrastructure (cloud platforms, HPC, storage) and software (data repositories, metadata services, registries, workflow systems and authentication/authorisation systems).
•    Produce high‑quality architectural documentation, system models, decision records, and integration guidelines.
 

30

Technical Leadership & Governance 
•  Provide strong, clear architectural leadership across a distributed consortium, ensuring aligned decisions and consistent technical direction.
•  Lead architectural governance processes, including chairing architectural groups, driving consensus, and resolving technical disputes.
•  Identify and clearly communicate technical risks, dependencies, and trade-offs early.

30

Service Quality & Delivery 
•  Guide engineering and research software engineering teams as they develop production-quality services with appropriate Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and associated error budgets.
•  Promote software delivery best practices through approaches such as site reliability engineering, continuous delivery, security-by-design, observability, documentation standards, and operational readiness across all services.
•  Provide mentorship to engineers and RSEs across institutions, supporting skills development, continuous improvement, and sustainable, delivery-focused engineering practices.

25

Community Engagement & Landscape Scanning 
•  Rapidly and responsively assess and recommend best‑of‑breed technologies and components, balancing innovation with operational stability.
•  Represent BioFAIR in UK and international communities, driving alignment with emerging standards and community practices. 

15

Education & Qualifications

Requirement

Importance

Degree in a relevant discipline

Essential

Specialist Knowledge & Skills

Requirement

Importance

Strong knowledge of metadata standards, identifiers, registries, and FAIR data principles, and a proven ability for keeping that knowledge up to date.

Essential

Demonstrated ability to create architectural documentation, models, and integration patterns.

Essential

Awareness of emerging AI/ML technologies and a clear ability to identify how emerging technologies are relevant and can be applied to digital research infrastructures

Essential

DevOps expertise, with a strong track-record of service deployments utilizing containerisation, orchestration, CI/CD, observability, and security by design.

Desirable

Deep understand of the role of infrastructure on service delivery, and awareness of trade-offs between cloud and HPC usage in research settings

Desirable

Experience with large scale federated compute workload execution, ideally including the use of workflow engines (e.g. Nextflow, Galaxy, Snakemake), and data transfer in these settings (including transfer protocols e.g. Globus and packaging approaches e.g., RO‑Crate).

Desirable

Understanding of UKRI, DRI initiatives in the UK, ELIXIR, EOSC, or similar research-infrastructure ecosystems.

Desirable

Experience with AAI systems (e.g., OIDC, SAML, GA4GH Passports).

Desirable

Relevant Experience

Requirement

Importance

Significant experience in senior systems architect or solutions architect roles (ideally both), designing distributed, interoperable, production-grade digital infrastructures.

Essential

Experience driving architectural decision-making in complex stakeholder environments.

Essential

Experience in life sciences or research-computing contexts

Desirable

Management and Leadership

Requirement

Importance

Proven leadership working across multi-institution, distributed teams.

Essential

Ability to operate with autonomy and provide clarity in ambiguous, distributed settings.

Essential

Commitment to inclusive, community-centric leadership (i.e. ensuring perspectives are heard, captured, turned into prompt decisions, and translated

Essential

Interpersonal & Communication Skills

Requirement

Importance

Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex architectural concepts with clarity to technical and non‑technical audiences.

Essential

Commitment to open, transparent communication and consensus building.

Desirable

Collaborative and community-driven approach to problem solving.

Desirable

Additional Requirements

Requirement

Importance

Attention to detail

Essential

Commits to responsible data stewardship and FAIR/CARE principles.

Essential

Promotes equality and values diversity

Essential

Be an outstanding leadership and technical role model

Essential

Able to present a positive image of self, BioFAIR and the Earlham Institute

Essential

Commitment to a culture of openness, collaboration and excellence

Essential

As this is a key leadership role in the Hub, on average the Architect would be expected to spend one day a week in EI.

Essential

Earlham Institute

About the Earlham Institute
The Earlham Institute is a hub of life science research, training, and innovation focused on understanding the natural world through the lens of genomics.

We are building a future where the biology of any organism can be understood by analysing its genome. Our mission is to decode the scale and complexity of living systems so we can understand, benefit from, and protect life on Earth.

The Earlham Institute is based on the Norwich Research Park and is one of eight institutes that receive strategic funding from the UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC).

Our Science
Earlham Institute scientists specialise in developing and testing the latest tools and approaches needed to decode living systems and make predictions about biology.

We are home to state-of-the-art facilities and technology, creating a unique combination of expertise and infrastructure. We have dedicated laboratories for genome sequencing, single-cell analysis, engineering biology, and large-scale automation; as well as one of the largest supercomputing facilities for life science research in Europe. Our Advanced Training team also provides access to specialised scientific training to upskill the next generation of research and technical staff.

Our Culture
The Earlham Institute champions 'team science'. Our collegiate and innovative research environment comes with significant support, including a commitment to your professional development, research and administrative assistance, and opportunities to build collaborations with scientists and industry on the Norwich Research Park, across the UK, and internationally.

The Institute is also home to talented technical and operational staff, whose invaluable contributions enable our science to have the maximum impact. We aim to recognise, reward, and develop all staff and students so that every individual feels able to achieve their best with us.

We work hard to nurture an engaged and positive workplace, centred on core values that include openness, technical excellence, and collaboration. We attract staff from around the world who contribute to - and benefit from - an environment that enables them to deliver world-class science alongside a supportive and social community.

For more information about working at the Earlham Institute, please click here.

Further Information:

Our Vision and Mission

Our Strategy

Our Culture

Life at Earlham Institute

Department

BioFAIR

Group Details

BioFAIR is supporting the UK’s life-sciences federated digital research infrastructure to become an integrated, national BioCommons that places the data, tools and services needed to answer life-science questions directly at researchers’ fingertips. Funded by a £34M UKRI investment over five years, BioFAIR will deliver a step change in ‘Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable’ (FAIR) research data management, providing end-to-end FAIR data and analysis capabilities alongside support and training for UK researchers.

To achieve this mission, BioFAIR is undertaking an ambitious programme to defragment the UK’s existing data and service landscape. Guided by a “reuse, don’t rebuild” philosophy, this work requires a cohesive architecture capable of onboarding mature services while also providing a framework for developing new, state-of-the-art capabilities. The architecture must evolve over time to meet changing community and research-infrastructure needs.

BioFAIR is structured around a distributed “Hub and Spokes” model. The BioFAIR Hub is responsible for coordination of the overall programme, project governance, procurement, and core service delivery, ensuring that BioCommons services remain aligned and interoperable. The Spokes are the primary engines of service delivery, and are organised around three Commons – the Data, Methods, and People Commons – as well as two additional capabilities, the Knowledge Hub and the BioFAIR Portal. A coherent, well-defined architecture is essential to guiding technical work across these spokes, which will be made up of partners from across multiple institutions and service providers.

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Lead Architect (BioFAIR)

BioFAIR is building the future of UK life‑science data infrastructure — and we’re looking for a Lead Architect to shape it.

Applications are invited for a Lead Architect to join the BioFAIR Hub, hosted at the Earlham Institute, Norwich, UK..

Background:

BioFAIR is supporting the UK’s life-sciences federated digital research infrastructure to become an integrated, national BioCommons that places the data, tools and services needed to answer life-science questions directly at researchers’ fingertips. Funded by a £34M UKRI investment over five years, BioFAIR will deliver a step change in ‘Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable’ (FAIR) research data management, providing end-to-end FAIR data and analysis capabilities alongside support and training for UK researchers.

To achieve this mission, BioFAIR is undertaking an ambitious programme to defragment the UK’s existing data and service landscape. Guided by a “reuse, don’t rebuild” philosophy, this work requires a cohesive architecture capable of onboarding mature services while also providing a framework for developing new, state-of-the-art capabilities. The architecture must evolve over time to meet changing community and research-infrastructure needs.

BioFAIR is structured around a distributed “Hub and Spokes” model. The BioFAIR Hub is responsible for coordination of the overall programme, project governance, procurement, and core service delivery, ensuring that BioCommons services remain aligned and interoperable. The Spokes are the primary engines of service delivery, and are organised around three Commons – the Data, Methods, and People Commons – as well as two additional capabilities, the Knowledge Hub and the BioFAIR Portal. A coherent, well-defined architecture is essential to guiding technical work across these spokes, which will be made up of partners from across multiple institutions and service providers.

BioFAIR is now looking to recruit an experienced Lead Architect to shape our architectural foundation and to work with technology providers across the UK research ecosystem to turn our distributed BioCommons vision into operational reality. This role requires someone with deep architectural experience in research or data-intensive environments and a strong understanding of how to deliver sustainable, interoperable services at scale.

The role:

This senior role blends systems architecture and solutions architecture, guiding the design of a national, federated research ecosystem. You’ll create a clear technical vision, lead multi‑institution architectural decisions, and ensure interoperable, national-scale services across the UK’s life‑science community.

The ideal candidate:

The successful candidate will thrive in distributed teams and have a demonstrated ability to create architectural documentation, models, and integration patterns. You will have the ability to communicate technical ideas with clarity and have deep experience across cloud/HPC, workflows, metadata, and FAIR data. You will also excel at assembling best‑of‑breed components into coherent solutions

This is primarily a hybrid role as BioFAIR partners are distributed across the UK. As this is a key leadership role in the BioFAIR Hub, the post holder would be expected to spend some time at the Earlham Institute working with other members of the BioFAIR Hub team, and some time visiting partners around the UK. The exact working patterns are flexible and we welcome applications from the right candidate irrespective of location in the UK.

Additional information:

Salary on appointment will be within the range of £71,100 - £90,000 per annum depending on qualifications and experience.  This is a full-time post for a contract up until 30 June 2029. Although full-time hours are available, applications from those interested in working part-time hours (or alternative working patterns) are also welcomed. 

Interviews will be held on 03 - 04 March 2026 (TBD).

This role meets the criteria for a visa application, and we encourage all qualified candidates to apply.  Please contact the Human Resources Team if you have any questions regarding your application or visa options

As a Disability Confident employer, we guarantee to offer an interview to all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for this vacancy.

The closing date for applications will be Friday 30 January 2026