Plantik Biosciences is looking for a highly motivated bioinformatician to join our team to tackle a problem that has profound meaning for our future: how to create climate-resilient plants faster? The ideal candidate is a senior/staff bioinformatician with great knowledge and command of different bioinformatics workflows & tools with a real passion for data. You will work alongside our CTO to take on this exciting challenge together.

About Us

Plantik is an early-stage agri-biotech startup building next-generation plant engineering technologies to create climate-resilient plants considerably faster.

From climate change, food security, to human well-being, how we will make new plants adapted to the rapidly changing environment and human needs remains a fundamental challenge of the 21st century. Working on this challenge will help define our common future in the decades to come. By advancing and democratizing the application of the latest biotechnologies in plant breeding, Plantik wants to equip and empower the next generation of plant engineers with effective and simple-to-use tools, so we can develop resilient and versatile plants the world badly needs a lot faster.

Plantik has active R&D programs across tomato, quinoa, and hemp, with potato and others coming up soon. Several of these are in partnership with leading plant research institutions such as Wageningen University (WUR), University College Dublin (UCD) & more.

Plantik is backed by Entrepreneur First, EIT Food, Bpifrance, Future Food Fund, AgFunder and other impact investors.

About the Role

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated senior Bioinformatician to lead Plantik's bioinformatics projects and R&D efforts, in close collaboration with academic/commercial partners and internal teams. This is a hands-on role at the intersection of genomics and computational biology using the latest cloud technologies, to uncover genetic variations that contribute to key phenotypic traits in plant varieties. You will become a core member of the team. As such we are looking for someone proactive, versatile, communicative, and always looking to push the envelope.

This position offers an exciting opportunity to witness how your work directly impacts plants that are grown inside of our labs, and contribute to cutting-edge research with wide implications for crop improvement and breeding programs.

Your Responsibilities

• Take ownership of bioinformatic projects, including external academic/commercial engagements.
• Build out capabilities of Plantik’s ATLANTIS data platform which provides key genomic targets on both coding and non-coding regions that are implicated in agronomic traits.
• Work with Data Engineering to:
• Create and improve various bioinformatic pipelines.
• Improve Machine Learning models by coming up with new model architectures, features, label gathering techniques, etc.
• Maintain and document workflows in a reproducible manner.
• Work with Breeders and Geneticists to:
• Interpret findings and contribute to breeding strategies.
• Contribute to scientific publications and reports.
• Stay updated with the latest methodologies in long-read sequencing, structural variant calling, and genome informatics, etc.

Required Qualifications

• At least 5+ years of relevant working experience (includes PhD) and a MSc. in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Genomics, or a related field.
• Experience with long-read sequencing technologies (e.g., PacBio HiFi, Oxford Nanopore) and associated data analysis tools.
• Strong proficiency in genome assembly (De Novo / Reference), structural variant detection (e.g., Sniffles, SVIM, PBSV), RNA-seq analysis, and variant or gene annotation methods.
• Experienced with high-performance computing (HPC) environments.
• Fluent in Python, and able to work within a shared code base using version control (Git).
• Familiar with at least one modern cloud provider (AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.).
• Familiarity with genomic databases, comparative genomics approaches, and functional annotation tools.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work both independently and collaboratively.

Preferred Qualifications

• PhD obtained in a related field.
• Experience working with Google Cloud (GCP), and infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform).
• Familiar with modern data warehouses (e.g. BigQuery, Snowflake) & associated management tools (e.g. DBT).
• Familiarity with containerisation techniques such as Docker.
• Experience with developing bioinformatic ML models.
• Experience working with plant genomes, particularly Solanaceae species.
• Experience Python Flask and Plotly Dash for visualizations.
• Knowledge of population genomics, pangenomics, GWAS or QTL.
• Experience integrating multiple data types for systems-level biological analysis.
• Demonstrated ability to publish scientific research in peer-reviewed journals.

More about the offer

• Location: Greater Paris region.
• You’ll be able to work from:
• Our central offices in Station F Paris, the world’s largest start-up campus, and take part in its wonderful network and events.
• Our offices and labs in Genopole to collaborate closely with our lab team.
• Starting date: as of March 2025.
• Open-end contract (CDI).
• Perks include meal coupons, sponsored transportation, access to Station F offices and the ecosystem, and working with a multidisciplinary team driving positive impact.

How to Apply

• Send CV (1 page) and cover letter to join@plantik.bio. We will be in touch from there.