Senior Application Developer

Description

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries seeks a progressive programmer to join its growing Digital Library Developer team. Working with an innovative blend of open-source and best-in-breed development tools, the Senior Application Developer creates software for multiple, complex digital library projects in the areas that include discovery, repository systems, researcher profile services, and business intelligence. Project work is designed and executed in teams comprised of software engineers, subject matter experts, and operations staff that emphasize collaboration and creative problem solving across a range of disciplines. The position reports to the Director for Digital Library Development and Systems, and supports a wide range of computing services which enhance and facilitate teaching, learning and research efforts of the University. Digital library development makes use of a full range of skills, including coding, technical architectures, application specifications, database design, and workflow analysis. The Senior Developer is responsible, along with other programmers, for testing, quality assurance and the life cycle management of library applications. The Senior Developer is a participant in and at times leads project teams to implement IT services, technical solutions and designs, and often has the support of a small crew of junior developers. The position also provides expertise on metadata that are relevant to digital library implementation and the development of local, reusable methodologies for metadata interactions.

The Senior Developer operates with a high degree of independence and professionalism in managing job responsibilities, work priorities, methodologies, and routines. The position requires a readiness to research IT developments and tools, to apply the findings of research to design and programming, and in general, to bring best practices and the latest concepts in the field to application development. The position is responsible for researching, recommending, managing and maintaining technical metadata standards for structured data repositories such as Oracle & MySQL databases, Apache Jackrabbit, Solr, and XML documents. The senior developer participates in IT planning as well as the execution of planning priorities.

The work requires close collaboration with a variety of audiences, including Library staff at all levels, project managers and developers across campus, Penn faculty and researchers, and IT professionals from other institutions and commercial firms. The Senior Developer must be highly effective working in groups and with subject matter experts who may not be IT professionals. The successful candidate will join a team of energetic and creative contributors. Responsibilities include timely and responsive communication, fulfillment of deadlines, and a readiness to engage in the bidirectional sharing of knowledge and expertise with colleagues.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Science, or other relevant field and at least 3 years of experience application development in Object Oriented and scripting languages or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Master’s desirable. Demonstrated experience with MVC development frameworks, version control, and application deployment (Git), servlet containers, application server and Java Virtual Machine configuration. Experience required working in a Linux server environment. Experience with relational database design, development and use including Oracle or MySQL. Experience with indexing and search technologies, such as Apache Lucene and Apache Solr, and Ruby on Rails is desirable. Effective interpersonal communication is a must and demonstrated experience working in cross-agency project teams is highly preferred.