Developer (Ingestion and Operations)

Description

The Digital Public Library of America (http://dp.la/) seeks a full-time Developer to support the technical aspects of the organization’s operational needs. This position is directly involved in ensuring that DPLA’s ingestion process of harvesting, mapping, enriching, and indexing metadata we receive from our partners runs smoothly, reliably, and according to schedule. In addition, the position actively supports DevOps at DPLA, particularly in terms of developing and implementing tools and procedures to provision, administer, monitor, and maintain DPLA’s infrastructure and applications. 

This position is part of DPLA’s Technology Team, which is is responsible for development, deployment, and management of all of DPLA’s technical infrastructure, including our staff- and public-facing applications, the DPLA Platform API, and the components that drive them. The DPLA Technology Team is a group of technologists with a commitment to open access, open source, and working collegially and collaboratively both inside and outside the organization at an international scale. We have a well-defined and evolving set of core values, including maximal openness to DPLA technology and infrastructure; diversity; transparency; reliability, accountability, and shared responsibility; empathy and mutual respect; leadership; and continued learning and growth.

We are seeking a curious and enthusiastic individual who recognizes both their technical strengths and areas for growth, and can help us work effectively to further DPLA’s mission to bring together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and make them freely available to all. A belief in this mission, and the drive to accomplish it over time in a collaborative spirit within and beyond the organization, is essential.

Responsibilities

Reporting to the Director for Technology, the Developer:

• Supports DPLA’s metadata ingestion process, ensuring that it runs efficiently, reliably, and scalably, through development of application modules and metadata mappings, and through the initiation and monitoring of ingestion processes.
• Collaborates closely with internal and external stakeholders in the ingestion process, including the DPLA Data Services Coordinator, the DPLA Assistant Director for Content, and technical staff at DPLA partner institutions.
• Provisions, deploys, maintains, evaluates performance for, and monitors both infrastructure and applications managed by DPLA, along with other DPLA Technology Team members.
• Performs other related duties and participates in special projects as assigned.

As a member of the DPLA Technology Team, the Developer:

• Contributes to the design, development, testing, integration, support, and documentation of user-facing applications and back-end systems.
• Supports content management policies, process, and workflows, and contribute to the development of new ones.
• Collaborates with internal and external stakeholders in planning and implementation of applications that support DPLA’s mission, strategic plan, and special initiatives.
• Maintains knowledge of emerging technologies to support the DPLA’s evolving services.
• Embodies and promotes the philosophy of open source, shared, and community-built software and technologies.
• Brings creative vision around possibilities for work with data that we haven’t yet imagined.

Requirements

• Experience with one or more programming languages and web application frameworks, such as Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, PHP, or Java.
• Experience with one or more infrastructure-as-a-service providers, such as Amazon Web Services.
• Experience with common system administration and application maintenance tasks in Linux environment, using an automation and configuration management tool such as Ansible (our current system of choice), Chef, Puppet, or CFEngine.
• Demonstrated experience working effectively in a team environment and the ability to interact well with stakeholders.
• Demonstrated experience and working knowledge of version control systems, such as Git, Mercurial, or Subversion.
• Demonstrated desire and enthusiasm about learning new toolsets, programming languages, or methods to support software development.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Excellent analytical and organizational skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with extract-transform-load workflows with varying input sources, such as XML, JSON, CSV, and relational databases.
• Experience working in a digital library, or in a technical role within a cultural heritage institution such as a library, archives, or museum.
• Demonstrated experience with performance analysis in infrastructure-as-a-service environments such as Amazon Web Services.
• Demonstrated experience with integrating user-facing applications with REST application programming interfaces.
• Demonstrated experience with continuous integration, and opinions about how we can best leverage it.
• Two or more years of experience with Ruby on Rails.

Highly Useful Qualifications

• Demonstrable knowledge of metadata standards and protocols used in the cultural heritage sector, such as Dublin Core, MODS, MARCXML, OAI-PMH, ResourceSync, and OAI-ORE.
• Experience with RDF and JSON-LD, as well as tools that support transformation of data into RDF.
• Experience with PostgreSQL database administration, Lucene-based search platforms such as Elasticsearch and Solr, triple stores, or graph databases.
• Demonstrated experience in working effectively in a geographically-distributed organization.
• A record of contributions to open source projects or communities, including code, bug reports, documentation, training materials, or workshops.

This position is full-time. DPLA is a geographically-distributed organization, with headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. Ideally, this position would be situated in the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston, but remote work based in other locations within the United States will also be considered.

Like its collection, DPLA is strongly committed to diversity in all of its forms. We provide a full set of benefits, including health care, life and disability insurance, and a retirement plan. Starting salary is commensurate with experience.

Please send a letter of interest, a resume/CV, and contact information for three references to jobs@dp.la. Please put “Developer (Ingestion and Operations)” in the subject line. Questions about the position may be directed to Mark A. Matienzo, Director of Technology, at mark@dp.la. We will begin reviewing applications on November 9, 2015, but will continue to accept applications until the position is filled.