Digital Humanities Developer, Yale University

Yale University offers exciting opportunities for achievement and growth in New Haven, Connecticut.  Conveniently located between Boston and New York, New Haven is the creative capital of Connecticut with cultural resources that include two major art museums, a critically-acclaimed repertory theater, state-of-the-art concert hall, and world-renowned schools of Architecture, Art, Drama, and Music.

Position Focus

This position designs and builds rich-client, web-based applications to support Digital Humanities projects on Yale’s campus. Using dynamic scripting languages such as Python and Ruby, the Programmer/Analyst produces back-end, web-server code that turns research ideas into concrete reality. Working in partnership with a UX & Visual Designer, this position is responsible for both new software platforms, as well as the adoption of open-source projects for use at Yale.

The Programmer/Analyst focuses on technological solutions and platforms that are crucial to Digital Humanities work. The majority of the systems involved in the DHLab fit within either the LAMP or Ruby on Rails technology stacks. The Programmer/Analyst works in a Linux web server environment, and deploys MVC-based, RESTful web applications. The position creates, maintains, and updates open-source repositories of code developed at Yale, as well as projects adapted from other institutions. The position works with both traditional relational and NoSQL database contexts, depending on the requirements of the specific project (such as managing crowd-sourced contributions from thousands of participants.)

The individual in this position will work to capture requirements from project leaders in an ongoing and iterative process. This role has the sole responsibility for determining the architecture, design, data schema, and development timeline to bring technical projects to successful completion. This position works alongside faculty, students, and librarians as clients and collaborators, to specify and realize complex Digital Humanities projects, and is responsible for evaluating project needs and recommending and implementing the best solution.

This position is a member of the newly-formed Digital Humanities Lab (DHLab) at Yale, housed in Sterling Memorial Library at the heart of campus. The lab serves Yale scholars who wish to collaborate across disciplines, with a focus on STEM/Arts & Humanities (STEAM) projects. This role supports projects that pair specialists in computer science, applied mathematics, statistics, and other STEM fields with partners in the humanities and the arts.

Required Education, Skills and Experience

  • Bachelor’s degree in a related field and five years of related work experience or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
  • Strong interpersonal and communications skills and demonstrated ability to work as part of collaborative teams. Ability to communicate effectively with faculty, students, and staff.
  • Demonstrated project management skills including background managing multiple priorities and experience with full lifecycle development. Proven ability to participate in and lead iterative discovery of project requirements from clients and organize those requirements into logical project phases.
  • Exceptional skillset in Ruby and/or Python; ability to implement code written in other languages (such as PHP frameworks and/or Node.js) as necessary.
  • Proven ability to deploy code in web contexts, such as HTML5, CSS, AJAX, JavaScript, and jQuery or similar; proficiency in revision control systems (such as GitHub), the UNIX command line (such as OS X and Linux), and databases (such as MySQL, MongoDB etc.).
  • Ability to work effectively in digital humanities, academic technology, academic libraries, museums, cultural heritage or similar environments.

Preferred Education, Skills and Experience

Master’s Degree in computer science, computer engineering, or similar. Previous experience with one or more of the following areas: Crowd-sourced annotations, Corpus Query Engines, Geo-Spatial Analysis, Machine Learning Toolkits, or Data Visualization Libraries. 

The University and the Library

The Yale University Library, as one of the world’s leading research libraries, collects, organizes, preserves, and provides access to and services for a rich and unique record of human thought and creativity. It fosters intellectual growth and supports the teaching and research missions of Yale University and scholarly communities worldwide. A distinctive strength is its rich spectrum of resources, including around 12.8 million volumes and information in all media, ranging from ancient papyri to early printed books to electronic databases. The Library is engaging in numerous projects to expand access to its physical and digital collections. Housed in eighteen buildings including the Sterling Memorial Library, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the Bass Library, it employs a dynamic and diverse staff of approximately five hundred who offer innovative and flexible services to library readers.  For additional information on the Yale University Library, please visit the Library’s web site at www.library.yale.edu.

Salary and Benefits

We invite you to discover the excitement, diversity, rewards and excellence of a career at Yale University. One of the country’s great workplaces, Yale University offers exciting opportunities for meaningful accomplishment and true growth. Our benefits package is among the best anywhere, with a wide variety of insurance choices, liberal paid time off, fantastic family and educational benefits, a variety of retirement benefits, extensive recreational facilities, and much more.

How to Apply

Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. Applications, consisting of a cover letter, resume, and the names and contact information of three professional references should be submitted by applying online at http://www.yale.edu/jobs. The STARS req. ID for this position is 29309BR.  Please be sure to reference 29309BR in your cover letter.

Yale University considers applicants for employment without regard to, and does not discriminate on the basis of an individual’s sex, race, color, religion, age, disability, status as a veteran, or national or ethnic origin; nor does Yale discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.

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