Field Applications Scientist - France (South)
Field based with 70% travel across Africa.
Closing Date: Thursday 19th March 2026
As a Field Applications Scientist (FAS) here at Illumina in the South of France, you will play a central role in enabling customer success by delivering expert technical training, troubleshooting, and scientific consultation. You will partner closely with customers throughout pre‑ and post‑sales engagement to ensure they gain maximum value from Illumina technologies, collaborating in turn with colleagues across our commercial organisation.
In this highly customer‑facing role, you will manage new system installations, support experimental design, and guide customers in data analysis to drive successful outcomes.
This position embodies our value of Make Customers Heroes—acting with our customers in mind at every step.
This is a permanent, field-based role to be based in the South of France. You will be responsible for supporting customers across Africa and should be flexible and willing to travel across Africa up to 70%.
Illumina's employee benefits are industry‑leading and include, flexible time off, private medical insurance, compassion and care time off, leisure travel insurance, pension, employee stock purchasing program, volunteer time off, and much more!
Why You:
You will bring deep scientific grounding, ideally with a MSc (or equivalent) in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology or Genetics, paired with hands‑on experience in genotyping or sequencing technologies. It is highly preferred that the candidate will have experience within Infectious Diseases as well as some knowledge of Bioinformatics. An understanding of the African market would also be highly beneficial to the role. You thrive in customer‑facing, technically complex environments where you can use your problem‑solving skills and independent judgment to resolve multi‑variable challenges.
You will be fluent in both French and English, with Arabic considered an advantage due to customer engagement across Africa. Experience with Illumina workflows, instrumentation, bioinformatics tools, or liquid handling robotics will help you succeed from day one. To excel in this role, you will be motivated by supporting scientific partners, delivering high‑quality training, and building trusted relationships—demonstrating our value of Be Accountable through integrity, clarity, and ownership. Comfort with up to 70% travel across Africa is essential.
Responsibilities will include
Coordinate new installations, including review of facility requirements and inspections, and instrument validation.
Implement Illumina solutions by assisting with customer lab and experimental design, workflow best practices, and data storage and analysis.
Conduct on-site customer trainings on cornerstone Illumina microarray, Next-Generation Sequencing, library preparation, bioinformatics, consumables, or related products.
Provide technical guidance and support to customers remotely via phone, email, and other digital communication channels, ensuring timely resolution of inquiries related to Illumina products, software, and workflows.
Address technical challenges related to biochemistry, assay or experimental design, software, instruments, or user's technical skill. Escalate and bring awareness of issues to appropriate internal resources as necessary to maximize customer uptime and minimize customer effort.
Stays informed of and communicates essential technical product updates, new applications, and market innovations to essential stakeholders.
Provide customer feedback in order to iteratively build better products fitting the needs of our customers.
Partner with other functional roles to execute on and assist with the development of strategic plans for winning new business and expanding current customer growth and success through consulting, presentations, workshops, demonstrations, and seminars.
Establishes and maintains customer relationships, understands customer goals, sets appropriate product and performance expectations, and stays attuned to customer needs.
Participates on departmental and cross functional project teams; work collaboratively to execute project plans.
Prioritize tasks and responsibilities to achieve departmental key performance metrics.
Represent the company professionally, ethically, and morally at all times.
Preferred background, skills and experience
MSc (or equivalent) in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology or Genetics
Some experience using Genotyping and Sequencing technologies is highly desirable
Some previous biotech experience / knowledge of Illumina applications is preferred
Experience within Infectious Diseases and an understanding of the African Market
Knowledge of Bioinformatics would be highly beneficial
Must be willing to travel up to 70% across Africa
Some prior field experience supporting customers in a highly technical field is advantageous
Demonstrable ability to independently work on highly complex problems requiring analysis of multiple variables
Use independent judgment in developing methods, techniques or evaluation criteria for obtaining results
Demonstrated written and verbal communication in English and French is essential (Arabic in addition would be an advantage)
An understanding of commonly used Genotyping data analysis software applications and/or Bioinformatics tools and programs is advantageous
Experience with instrumentation such as liquid handling robotics and optical scanners preferred
Demonstrable superior problem solving and interpersonal and account management skills within a commercial environment
Excellent customer service skills