Openings: Two Software Development Positions, Stanford University

Stanford University Libraries seeks talented software developers to fill two open positions, Infrastructure Developer and Web Developer, as part of the Revs Program (http://revs.stanford.edu). Both are four year grant-funded positions.

Digital Library Software Engineer, Stanford University Libraries

Job ID 43757
Job Location University Libraries
Job Category Library
Salary 4P3
Date Posted Jul 29, 2011

To apply: go to http://jobs.stanford.edu/find_a_job.html and search for the position number, and click the “apply” button.

Working Title: Revs Infrastructure Developer
Job Classification: System Software Developer

This position is double posted at the 4P3 and 4P4 levels.


Job Objective:

Stanford University Libraries is seeking a talented software engineer to support the digitization, collection delivery and collaboration components of the Revs Program at Stanford. This is a four-year, grant-funded position.

This position is part of the Revs Program at Stanford (http://revs.stanford.edu). This program is dedicated to developing an understanding of the impact of the automobile on society, culture and technology. The Revs Program at Stanford was founded to inspire a new trans-disciplinary field connecting the past, present and future of the automobile. The Revs Program fosters an intellectual community bridging the humanities and fine arts, social sciences, design, science and engineering, and the professions. As a part of that effort, SULAIR will support the dissemination of scholarly research on the automobile; provide digital access to a collection of over two million items relating to automotive history, racing and technology; and, develop a system and service to develop and sustain an online automotive community. Members of the team will play a role in building the world’s leading center on the study of the impact of the automobile on the 20th and 21st century.

The Repository Developer will primarily develop digital library software to enable management, preservation, and online discovery of Revs materials. This will involve deployment of a new repository and web application using the Hydra technology stack (http://projecthydra.org). The Repository Developer will be a core contributor to the open source Hydra project in the process of building the Revs digital repository.

The Repository Developer will be a member of a core team dedicated to the successful completion of this project, and will work closely with the project manager, Revs web developer, the information architect, digital library infrastructure developers, the user experience designer and other developers involved in digital library initiatives. This particular project is highly collaborative, and will involve interactions with developers, scholars and staff across Stanford and from other institutions. As a member of SULAIR’s digital library application development team, the Repository Developer will contribute to the overall development of the Stanford Library’s web and digital library infrastructure, and help plan, specify, and build the technologies needed to support the University’s goal of ubiquitous access to scholarly information.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Design and deploy a world class digital access system for the Revs collection.
• Leverage and further develop SULAIR’s existing work on hydra (http://projecthydra.org/) to serve as a full text, image and media (audio/video) delivery environment.
• Provide analysis and software engineering support for implementing and leveraging the open source Fedora framework, leveraging both XML and RDF-based metadata.
• Enable cross-linking of Revs materials through persistent & well-structured methods, allowing researchers to build associative graphs of related materials in a rigorous and machine-actionable manner.
• Leverage and further develop existing infrastructure to create a text, image & media file processing pipeline for digital Revs content; as materials are digitized by Revs and its agents, this infrastructure will ensure the orderly management of the files and their associated metadata; the processing of these files for activities such as optical character recognition (OCR), and the transfer of a copy of these files to SULAIR for long-term preservation and accessioning into Stanford’s digital library.
• Leverage and further develop existing infrastructure to preserve Revs content in the Stanford Digital Repository.

Required Qualifications and Demonstrated Experience:

• Expertise in Ruby on Rails, both for application development and in engineering an enhanced framework, including plug-ins, engines and gems, for developing library and repository applications.
• Demonstrated ability to develop new programming skills quickly, and to grasp unfamiliar architectures and application designs quickly.
• Demonstrated ability to write solid, simple, elegant code both independently and in a team-programming environment and within schedule limitations.
• Demonstrated expertise with XML and related tools and technologies (e.g., XML schema, schema management and databases, XSLT, X-forms).
• Experience with relational database design and management. Experience implementing database applications for SQL Server, Oracle, or MySQL.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently on a project from specification to launch; communicate effectively, orally and in writing; and work with all levels of staff, vendors, and consultants.
• Demonstrated proficiency applying best practices to technical projects, especially test-first development and automated testing. Also must make effective use of team collaboration tools, build management, and version control systems.
• Demonstrated success participating in and contributing to open source software development projects.
• Demonstrated experience with library applications and technology, including experience participating in relevant library open source efforts.
• In-depth knowledge of library policies and practice, metadata standards and the scholarly communication framework
• Quick and self-bootstrapping learner. Particularly adept at quickly learning new scripting and programming languages.
• Expertise in networking and systems integration in a heterogeneous hardware and software environment.
• Four-year college degree or equivalent with five to seven years demonstrated experience required.
• At the 4P4 level, seven to ten years demonstrated experience required.

Desired Knowledge and Skills:

• Advanced degree desired
• Demonstrated success participating in community-based open source projects, specifically those relevant to the Stanford Libraries’ Digital Library architecture, such as Fedora, Blacklight, Solr or Hydra.
• Familiarity with the process of digitizing images, text, audio and video in cultural heritage institutions.
• Familiarity with RDF, semantic web, and linked data technologies and practices
• Familiarity with XML schemas used to describe digitized cultural heritage materials, such as TEI, MODS, METS, and EAD.
• Prior, successful experience working as a professional in an academic and/or library environment.
• Interest and enthusiasm in the social, technical and economic history of the automobile.

*****

Digital Library Software Engineer, Stanford University Libraries

Job ID 43758
Job Location University Libraries
Job Category Library
Salary 4P3
Date Posted Jul 29, 2011

To apply: go to http://jobs.stanford.edu/find_a_job.html and search for the position number, and click the “apply” button.

Working Title: Revs Web Developer
Job Classification: System Software Developer

This position is double posted at the 4P3 and 4P4 levels.

Job Objective:

Stanford University Libraries is seeking a talented web developer to support scholarship in the digital age by delivering on the promises of the digital library. This is a four-year, grant-funded position.

This position is part of the Revs Program at Stanford (http://revs.stanford.edu). This program is dedicated to developing an understanding of the impact of the automobile on society, culture and technology. The Revs Program at Stanford was founded to inspire a new trans-disciplinary field connecting the past, present and future of the automobile. The Revs Program fosters an intellectual community bridging the humanities and fine arts, social sciences, design, science and engineering, and the professions. As a part of that effort, SULAIR will support the dissemination of scholarly research on the automobile; provide digital access to a collection of over two million items relating to automotive history, racing and technology; and, develop a system and service to develop and sustain an online automotive community. Members of the team will play a role in building the world’s leading center on the study of the impact of the automobile on the 20th and 21st century.

The Web Developer will be responsible for the development of an online discovery, visualization and collaboration environment for digital library and research data materials related to automobilia. This will involve deployment of a new repository and web application using the Hydra technology stack, as well as integration of third party tools, components and API’s to enhance these environments. The web developer will be a core contributor to the open source Hydra project in the process of building the Revs digital repository.

The second major role of the web developer is building and sustaining the program website, which is intended to serve as the working space for the automotive research community at Stanford. The prevailing web publishing platform and content management system used at Stanford is Drupal, and this project will likely require the design and development of a sophisticated Drupal-based website.

The Web Developer will be a member of a core team dedicated to the successful completion of this project, and will work closely with the project manager, Revs repository developer, the information architect, digital library infrastructure developers, the user experience designer and other web developers involved in digital library initiatives.This particular project is highly collaborative, and will involve interactions with developers, scholars and staff across Stanford and from other institutions. As a member of SULAIR’s web development team, the Web Developer will contribute to the overall development of the Stanford Library’s web and digital library infrastructure, and help plan, specify, and build the technologies needed to support the University’s goal of rich, digitalaccess to scholarly information.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Develop and deploy a digital repository and digital library applications to support discovery of and access to digitized books, journals, photographs, posters, promotional materials, manuscript archives and other unique artifacts related to the history of the automobile. This will involve full deployment and enhancement of the Hydra technology stack, using Ruby on Rails, Fedora, Blacklight and Solr, as well as integration of third party components and API’s to provide ground-breaking functionality for exhibits, mashups, collaborative annotation, and novel visualizations of information.
Develop and deploy the application layer of digital asset management (processing, description, permissions management) interfaces to support the digitization, accessioning and preservation of the digital materials associated with the Revs at Stanford program.
• Build, enhance and sustain the Revs at Stanford web site to support research and teaching. This will include deployment of a Drupal intance, custom theming, module integration and development, and custom coding to support the unique needs of the program. This may include development of the site’s information architecture and contributions to its visual design.
• Provide project management support as well as liase with Stanford faculty, students and researchers, as well as outside researchers and stakeholders from industry, automotive associations and the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida.

Required Knowledge and Skills:

• Demonstrated expertise participating in successful web application development efforts using Drupal (PhP/MySQL), Ruby on Rails, or Java. Familiarity with a range of programming and scripting languages is essential; Drupal and Ruby on Rails expertise is highly desirable.
• Demonstrated ability to write solid, simple, elegant code both independently and in a team-programming environment and within schedule limitations.
• In-depth knowledge of HTML and related website development technologies and software (especially JavaScript, Ajax, CSS and PHP).
• Demonstrated expertise with XML and related tools and technologies (e.g., XML schema, schema management and databases, XSLT, X-forms).
• Experience with relational database design and management. Experience implementing database applications for MySQL, Oracle, or SQL Server.
• Strong writing and communication skills, particularly in an academic setting.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently on a project from specification to launch; communicate effectively, orally and in writing; and work with all levels of staff, vendors, and consultants.
• Demonstrated proficiency working on a cross-functional web development team, including human-computer interaction specialists, system administrators, database administrators, librarians and end users.
• Demonstrated proficiency applying best practices to technical projects, especially test-first development and automated testing. Also must make effective use of team collaboration tools, build management, and version control systems.
• Interest in and capacity to contribute to open source software development projects.Capacity to do so may include technical, communication and social skills.
• Quick and self-bootstrapping learner. Particularly adept at quickly learning new scripting and programming languages.
• A curious, innovative and dynamic approach to experimenting with new technologies, user interfaces, API’s and programming methods, with the ability to rapidly integrate useful leads into the project’s technology core.
• Excellent sense of visual design, graphic production and information architecture is highly desired; experience with and appreciation for effectively incorporating these domains into a development project is required.
• Expertise in networking and systems integration in a heterogeneous hardware and software environment.
• Four-year college degree or equivalent with five to seven years demonstrated experience required.
• At the 4P4 level, seven to ten years demonstrated experience required.

Desired Knowledge and Skills:

• Demonstrated experience with library applications and technology, including experience participating in relevant library open source efforts.
• Familiarity with XML schemas used to describe digitized cultural heritage materials, such as TEI, MODS, METS, and EAD.
• Familiarity with RDF, semantic web, and linked data technologies and practices
• Familiarity with the Hydra Project and its related technologies: Fedora, Blacklight, and Solr.
• Interest and enthusiasm in the social, technical and economic history of the automobile.
• Familiarity with test driven development processes, or the desire and ability to learn them.

Feel free to browse other great jobs at http://jobs.stanford.edu/find_a_job.html

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