Digital Library Software Engineer

Description

Stanford University Libraries is seeking a talented software engineer to support applications and services as part of its digital library, an internationally recognized technology program developing innovative solutions to advance teaching, learning and research at one of the world’s leading universities. We are a mission-driven organization that emphasizes open, collaborative work and community engagement within Stanford and with partner institutions around the world.

This position will be a key contributor to a dynamic team of technologists, architects and information professionals defining the library of the future. Come work in an agile-inspired, test-driven, team environment, balancing the rapid and incremental delivery of new features with operational robustness. Join us to realize the benefits of working with one of the most talented technology teams in Silicon Valley to support Stanford scholars in one of the nation’s most inspiring campus environments, in the heart of the beautiful Bay Area.

This is a 4 year, fixed-term position in the library’s Digital Library Systems and Services group, with the possibility for renewal.

Duties and Responsibilities

•   Software engineering for the Stanford Digital Library (60%)
Work with others on principally Ruby on Rails based applications and services incorporating a variety of custom and open-source software. Help maintain and extend a wide range of current applications that support end-user access, open APIs, and internal administrative services. Leverage, adapt and collaboratively extend SUL’s digital library service-based infrastructure as well as open source technologies and industry best practices. Replace or modernize older applications to integrate them with current technologies and infrastructure. Responsibilities extend beyond code to managing digital assets themselves, to help bring in, enrich and make available the wealth of digital resources held at Stanford.

•   Operations engineering (30%)
Promote robustness and sustainability by engineering for reliability and scale, from development through deployment. Work with SUL’s digital library operations team to leverage devOps infrastructure to streamline operations, maintenance and deployment of incremental enhancements to existing applications.

•   Community Engagement (10%)
Represent Stanford in the digital library communities; identify and adapt code that fits Stanford’s environment. Document and disseminate Stanford development and operational solutions to other adopters and potential code contributors. Track and apply industry best practices, tools and methodologies to Stanford digital library development and operations efforts.

Qualifications

•  Demonstrated experience with, or capacity to learn Ruby on Rails for application development and for engineering in an enhanced framework, including plug-ins, engines and gems.
•  Working knowledge of or ability to adopt and apply agile software development practices and test driven development principles. Ability to understand best practices for software development, and an ability to introduce and reinforce application of those practices in a team environment.
•  Demonstrated ability writing solid, simple, elegant code both independently and in a team-programming environment, and within schedule limitations.
•  Experience working collaboratively on a project from specification to launch; ability to work with multiple levels of staff, and within open source communities; good verbal and written communication skills.
•  A candidate at the P3 level will require three or more years relevant experience engineering applications or services in a data-driven software environment.

Desired Skills

•  Prior success working in an academic environment.; experience in the digital library community is a plus.
•  Familiarity with Library and Repository-related applications.
•  Experience contributing to community-based open source projects, including but not limited to those relevant to the Stanford Libraries’ Digital Library architecture, such as Fedora, Blacklight, Solr or Hydra.
• A passion for good metadata