Can a teaspoon of soil reveal the species living around it? At Naturalis in Leiden, we turn environmental DNA from soil, water and air into biodiversity knowledge. In this Bioinformatician job, you'll build the high-throughput sequencing and AI pipelines that make species monitoring accessible to researchers, industry, policy and citizens - work that shapes the future of how we understand life on our planet.
As aBioinformatician
- You help build a national research infrastructure that uses environmental DNA to monitor life on Earth: pioneering work with real impact for science, policy and society.
- You work at the frontier of DNA sequencing and AI, with the freedom to experiment and bring your own ideas to detecting and classifying biodiversity.
- You join a multidisciplinary, international team at the Netherlands' national biodiversity institute, where FAIR data and open science are the norm, not an afterthought.
This iswhat you'll be doing
As a bioinformatician, you develop and refine the pipelines that turn environmental DNA samples into biodiversity insight. You work on metabarcoding of mixed environmental samples, calculate diversity metrics including phylogenetic diversity, apply machine learning to classify sequences, and keep our molecular reference databases current. You deploy and maintain these pipelines on workflow systems such as Galaxy and SnakeMake, running on cloud and high-performance computing infrastructure.
You also make sure these pipelines don't stand alone. You integrate them into the wider Naturalis information architecture, so metadata and provenance flow in automatically from upstream and results move smoothly downstream to our information products. The goal: non-technical users can run analyses themselves, and everything stays scalable, reproducible and FAIR.
Here's whatwe have to offer
- A gross monthly salary of € 3.463,- to € 4.500,- for a full-time contract.
- End-of-year bonus of 3.4% of your gross annual salary and 8% holiday pay.
- Time off thanks to 27 days of leave per year with full-time employment. Plus 1 extra day that you can use for a holiday that is important to you.
- Commuting allowance depending on your means of transport.
- Pension scheme via PFZW, where Naturalis pays 60% of your premium.
- A focus on your work-life balance. You can work partly from home and schedule your workday between 07.00 and 19.00.
- Plenty of development opportunities. We support your growth and give you unlimited access to the online training platform Goodhabitz.
- Fascinating knowledge events. These help you stay up to date on the latest developments in both your own field and outside it, such as our lectures and gatherings on various (scientific) topics. You can also attend – or take part in – the fascinating internal information session Naturalis Draait Door.
- A laptop and phone allowance.
- Nice extras such as discounts on software and hardware for private use, collective health insurance plans, and a bicycle scheme. You’ll also enjoy discounts in our museum restaurant and unlimited free access to our award-winning museum for you and your family.
- Fun team outings. We also get together for drinks every month, organise an annual BBQ and a fantastic New Year's party. Not your scene? That's fine too, of course. All team activities are voluntary.
- A unique work environment in a state-of-the-art building where you will feel proud to work every single day – we guarantee it!
The worldlies at your feet!
Literally. Whatever your role may be, you contribute to the preservation of our planet on a daily basis. Naturalis Biodiversity Center...
- is the national research and knowledge institute and a key player in biodiversity data and infrastructures.
- houses one of the largest natural history collections in the world.
- welcomes 500,000 museum visitors per year.
- collaborates with universities, expertise centres and museums around the world.
- has a staff of diverse colleagues in various functions and with many different nationalities, with whom you will work together in an informal atmosphere.
This isyour team
You join the Data Competence Center (DCC), Naturalis's central hub for biodiversity data, where data stewards, bioinformaticians and data architects work together to turn fragmented data swamps into connected, reusable data streams. Within it, you'll be part of a small, international bioinformatics team, including a Product Owner that builds and runs analysis pipelines, manages HPC and a shared Galaxy server, and works closely with researchers across the institute. We're open, approachable and curious, and we measure ourselves by how much easier we make our colleagues' work.
What you bring to the table
- A bioinformatics background at HBO or university level, with hands-on experience in high-throughput DNA sequence analysis.
- Programming experience in Python (and ideally R), with version control (git) as part of your normal workflow.
- Experience working in a Linux environment with HPC and workflow management systems such as Galaxy or SnakeMake.
- Familiarity with DNA metabarcoding, taxonomy or phylogenetics.
- Awareness of FAIR principles and reproducible open science.
- Experience integrating distributed systems (e.g. RESTful web services) and working with databases (SQL/NoSQL).
Become our newBioinformatician
- Upload your CV and motivation letter via the application button before Monday July 20th 2026.
- Want to know more about the position before you apply? Call or message Rutger Vos, department head DCC, via 06 – 270 858 06 or send an email to rutger.vos@naturalis.mom.
- For more information about the application procedure, you can send an email to our colleagues in the P&O department via sollicitaties@naturalis.mom.
We are managing the recruitment for this vacancy ourselves; unsolicited acquisition is therefore not desired.