Technical Architect - Thor Project

Description

Do you have a passion for data sharing, citation, and persistent identifiers? Then join our team! DataCite is hiring a Technical Architect  (http://bit.ly/1JtGYHw) for our THOR project. 

About DataCite

DataCite, formed in 2009, is an international not-for-profit consortium of over 30 institutions from 18 countries worldwide. DataCite makes research better by enabling people to find, share, use, and cite data. DataCite is a leading global membership organization offering reliable persistent data identification and is becoming an important component of the global research infrastructure. DataCite engages with stakeholders including researchers, scholars, data centres, libraries, publishers, and funders through advocacy, guidance and services.

About THOR

THOR is a 30 month project funded by the European Commission. The project is led by The British Library and the consortium consists of 10 project partners; ORCID, CERN, EMBL-EBI, PANGAEA, Elsevier Labs, Australian National Data Service, Dryad, and PLOS. With this expertise in Open Science and scholarly communication, the consortium aims at supporting and connecting the main building blocks in Open Science with new PID based services. Every researcher in Europe and beyond shall benefit from THOR capacity building and developments. As the leading entity minting identifiers for data sets, DataCite has a primary role in the THOR project.

Position Overview

The Technical Architect will work collaboratively to lead Datacite’s technical contributions to the THOR project. This includes a focus on the overarching goals of the project to:

• establish interoperability between community platforms, new Open Science services and DataCite. This will include work on the harmonization of persistent identifier (PID) data models for diverse data and content types, contributor platforms, and organizations.
• work with THOR project partners and the broader DataCite community on the integration of new PID based services across organizations and disciplines.  Such services will support the creation and capture of PIDs related to contributors, data and content, organizations and shall be integrated into data management processes, and repository and publisher submission workflows.

Success in fulfilling these goals requires an understanding of the relationships between various identifier schemes, data sources and schemas, and conceptual models  combined with the implementation of THOR’s technical components to cross-link identifiers and workflows.

Key areas of responsibility

• Envision, develop, implement and manage a robust technical architecture for Datacite within the THOR project. Take primary responsibility for the creation of technical documentation, and maintenance plans and procedures for THOR’s technical infrastructure to ensure the high performance and availability.
• Work collaboratively to develop interoperability with international identifier initiatives (e.g. ORCID, CrossRef). Work collaboratively with DataCite members and the broader community to develop interoperability for existing institutional identifier schemas and systems that will  benefit from DataCite exposure.
• Work closely with the THOR Project Coordinator at British Library to ensure the successful delivery of the project aims within time, budget, resource and quality control constraints and according to performance indicators.
• Work closely with the DataCite team, members, and broader community to ensure the overarching goals of DataCite and the THOR project are reached.

Qualifications

The ideal candidate will possess a majority of these competencies and capabilities:

Position Knowledge and Skills

• Visionary technologist with knowledge, experience, and passion for data driven research, scholarly communication, and the technical aspects associated with data management and sharing (e.g.identifiers, data, and metadata)
• An understanding of the issues associated with data citation and data metrics.

Technical Skills

• Advanced skills in agile software development, including specification, design, implementation, and deployment of user centric web applications.Advanced knowledge of secure software development and web technology platforms.
• General web development skills (Ruby/Rails, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS) plus at least one script language.
• Experience with GitHub source code control.

Project Management and Communication Skills

• Proven ability to manage multi-institutional projects, excellent project management skills and experience coordinating and promoting services.
• Experience in successfully working with geographically dispersed multi-national  teams and operate effectively in a remote environment.
• Strong communication and presentation skills. Strong written and spoken English.
• Ability to explain complex technical issues to non-technical audiences.
• Interest and availability to travel within the EU.

Terms

Fixed term, full-time post for 30 months, starting June 2015
Flexible location; ideally co-located with a THOR partner

How to apply

Please send a CV and a letter of motivation to Patricia Cruse