Company Description

As a global key player in yeasts and fermentation, Lesaffre designs, manufactures and markets innovative solutions for Baking, Food taste & pleasure, Health care and Biotechnology.

Family group born in northern France in 1853, now a multi-national and a multicultural company, Lesaffre is committed to working with confidence to better nourish and protect the planet.

In close collaboration with its clients and partners, Lesaffre employs 11 000 people in more than 50 countries.

Lesaffre achieves a turnover of 3 billion euros.

Job Description

Following recent investments in high-throughput microbial screening and genome editing platforms, the Lesaffre Institute for Science and Technology (LIST) seeks to expand its capacity in the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics.

As a Bioinformatician Research Associate, you will join the Biodata Center of Excellence. Our mission is to accelerate the development of Lesaffre products by leveraging multi-omics data and artificial intelligence. Our expertise spans diverse domains such as bioinformatics, comparative genomics and transcriptomics, metabolic engineering, high-dimensional statistics and deep learning. We act as an innovation enabler and catalyst, working in close collaborations with the various Business Units of Lesaffre and the other LIST Centers of Excellence, on a great variety of projects.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Develop advanced bioinformatics methods and tools:
  • Design and maintain databases, data storage systems, and data management processes to ensure the integrity and accessibility of biological data.
  • Develop and optimize bioinformatics scripts, tools and pipelines to automate and streamline data analysis workflows.
  • Provide expertise in next-generation sequencing and microbial genomics to implement state-of-the-art bioinformatics pipelines and comparative genomics approaches.
• Increase team expertise in data and software engineering:
  • Contribute to the development and implementation of good practices for bioinformatics data analysis and management.
  • Provide training and support to other team members on the use of bioinformatics tools, software, and computational workflows.
• Contribute to Lesaffre Projects:
  • Participate in the design and execution of research projects.
  • Develop close collaborations within cross-functional teams to define appropriate design of experiments and meaningful data analysis strategies.
  • Interpret the results of your analyses to gain insights into our microbial strains and/or fermentation processes.
  • Communicate research findings, insights, and recommendations to stakeholders.
• Ensure Operational Excellence:
  • Deliver timely results to meet project deadlines.
  • Provide high-quality reporting on project contributions.
  • Develop robust and documented software components to ensure traceability and reproducibility of your analyses.
  • Valorize the outcome of your work through publications and patents.

This role requires a combination of advanced bioinformatics and scientific software development skills, a collaborative mindset, and a focus on operational excellence to drive impactful outcomes for Lesaffre.

For this position, we require:

• A Master degree with 3 years of experience in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Molecular Biology, or a related field.
• Demonstrated experience in bioinformatics research and/or industry applications.
• Prior experience in microbial genomics.
• Proficient in programming languages such as Python, R, or Perl, and experience with bioinformatics software, tools and workflows (Nextflow).
• Hands-on experience in software development, including version control using Git, containerization using tools like Docker, and DevOps practices.
• Experience in deploying and managing applications in the AWS cloud environment.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a multidisciplinary team environment.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Aspiration for excellence and performance.
• Curiosity and team spirit.
• Fluency in English.

Prior experience in the following domains would be considered a plus:

• Industrial fermentation applications.
• Mass-spectrometry data analysis.
• QTL and GWAS analyses.
• Genome-scale metabolic models.

Additional Information

What can Lesaffre offer you:

• Join a family business rich in a long history with human-oriented values with a mission: To Nourish and Protect our Planet, 
• Evolve in an enriching work environment and a multicultural context 

At Lesaffre, diversity is a strength that enriches our culture and our teams. We are committed to offering you a work environment where you can thrive, regardless of your background, gender, age or abilities. We encourage all applications, as we believe that diverse perspectives strengthen our ability to innovate and meet the challenges of tomorrow.