Digital Collections Developer

Description

 The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is looking for an innovative and passionate individual to join our team and inspire citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity. With the primary mission of Rescuing the Evidence: building and preserving for posterity the fully accessible collection of record on the Holocaust, the Office of Collections is currently seeking a Digital Collections Developer.

This position is located in the Office of Collections, Digital Collections Division, of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The position involves working under the administrative supervision of the Director of Digital Collections to carry out tasks relating to applications software development for the Digital Collections Division of the Office of Collections. The candidate will provide creative, efficient, and elegant technical solutions to inherently complex problems. The growing digital collection comprises tens of millions of image files, tens of thousands of hours of media, hundreds of thousands of descriptions, and about a dozen sources of metadata. It all needs to be preserved and made available forever, and we want to provide better user interfaces to support all of our constituents, both internal users and via the web.

This is a full-time donated position (non-Federal) paid with the Museum’s private funds, with a two year work assignment. Salary is commensurate with experience.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Design, develop, and implement tools and systems that relate to processing, identification, and access to the digitized historical assets held by or overseen by the Office of Collections.

Develop software systems to enhance access to Collections materials including digitized archival materials, photographs, and oral histories, historical film, Museum objects, and various databases and sources of metadata. The work consists of software and user interface design for new projects as well as maintenance, modification, and refactoring of existing systems.

Use systems, tools, and approaches such as modern programming tools (e.g. Java, Python, PHP); contemporary MVC (model-view-controller) frameworks as embodied in systems such as Ruby on Rails; JQuery/JavaScript; Linux shell scripting; TDD/BDD (test-driven development, behavior-driven development) and code reviews; and source-code control (e.g. git, GitHub).

Plans and develops methods of operation to effectively work with metadata and uses metadata transformation, search, discovery, and user interfaces for Collections cataloging materials.

Interact frequently with other federal, public, and private institutions dealing with similar subject matter collections, as well as with private individuals both nationally and internationally, survivors of the Holocaust, and other related individuals working in collections.

Develop and deploy open source and commercial software systems such as Blacklight (the Ruby on Rails application), ArchivesSpace (archival cataloging system), and ResourceSpace (a digital asset management system), or similar systems.

Improve maintainability, performance, security, using refactor and update systems, and maintain conformance with the community of users of each system.

Test and monitor systems for proper operation.

Implement test-driven development and/or behavior-driven development systems to ensure proper operation.

Perform other duties as assigned.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
At least two years developing code for production-quality, complex systems to process and enhance access to library, museum, or archival metadata in a professional or educational environment.
Experience with at least one MVC-oriented development frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, Laravel, Django, or similar.

Experience developing and deploying applications using at least two contemporary programming and web development languages such as Ruby, PHP, Python, or server-side and/or client-side JavaScript.

Knowledge of metadata standards of representation and exchange that relate to library or collections systems, such as MARC, EAD, METS, MODS, TEI and other XML or JSON standards or guidelines.

Understanding of software development practices. Experience with refactoring existing installed systems in order to enhance feature sets or upgrade to newer versions. Experience with source code control systems such as git. Experience with test-driven development (TDD) and/or behavior-driven development (BDD). Experience customizing open source software.

Experience with theory and practice of relational databases such as MySQL and/or SQL Server.

Familiarity with the Linux command line and shells (e.g. bash). Experience developing and deploying production systems in a Linux environment.

Familiarity with source code control and collaborative development systems (e.g. git, svn).

HOW TO APPLY

Interested applicants should send their resume and cover letter to careers@ushmm.org. Please include both your resume and cover letter in a single PDF or Word document titled “First Name Last Name”. Salary history may be required during the interview process.  For more information about the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, please visit www.ushmm.org.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. This position is open to all qualified individuals. If you are not a US citizen, you must possess sufficient legal documentation and permission to work in the United States (and provide if requested).