Metadata and Archive Technical Manager

Description

JOB OVERVIEW

Reporting to the Executive Director, the Metadata and Archive Technical Manager will supervise and manage the MLA developers, website development, and metadata repository development, assigned AAPB projects, and metadata processes, creation, and structure for the MLA. This includes, but not limited to relations with the Library of Congress, Digital Commonwealth, World Cat, the Samvera community, outside technical developers/vendors, GBH IT, product end users, and other relationships that may develop.

RESPONSIBILITIES

DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT

• Supervise MLA developers and lead iterative, continuous integration development workflows for MLA and AAPB projects.
• Oversee and supervise developer work on MLA and AAPB web and software development projects, including maintaining the backlog, prioritizing work, analyzing development approaches with the team, and communicating with the Executive Director and other staff on priorities, deadlines, challenges, and future needs. 
• Communicate with MLA and AAPB staff to gather new use cases for technical systems and design solutions to address those needs.

METADATA MANAGEMENT (MLA & AAPB)

• In coordination with the Executive Director and other team members, lead and be involved in decision-making regarding metadata systems creation and management in the MLA and AAPB.
• Manage descriptive metadata for AAPB acquisitions, including normalization, ingest, and working with collection donors. They will also manage evolving data models, metadata application profiles, and workflow processes for MLA and AAPB repositories and websites. This includes developing best practices for metadata ingestion, establishing and carrying out workflows for generating and acquiring new forms of metadata (like transcripts and other time-based descriptive data), designing and implementing enhanced approaches to displaying metadata to end users, and working with staff on other projects to ensure that metadata is created and managed according to specifications.
• Collaborate with the project team on technical projects, including websites, repositories, and innovative metadata generation, to support preservation of and access to the GBH archival collection.
• Coordinate with internal and external partners working on these projects and will be responsible for liaising with the partners and MLA regarding recommending and carrying out workflows and tasks on the technical phases and components of such projects.

MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITIES

• Supervise MLA Developers and the Systems Analyst and will be responsible for the performance management of their direct reports. This includes monitoring and evaluating job performance, as well as providing coaching, motivation and feedback on their performance.

SKILL SET

Required

• Demonstrated experience coordinating projects and superior cross-functional project coordination skills

• Superior critical-thinking and problem solving skills

• Strong analytical and quantitative skills; ability to use hard data and metrics to back up assumptions, recommendations and drive actions

• Ability to work well collaboratively and independently on complex projects involving diverse participants, using informed judgment and clear communication to successfully complete tasks in a timely manner

• Demonstrated organizational, analytical, and independent problem-solving skills, with the ability to process a large quantity of work while maintaining a consistently high degree of accuracy.

• Facility with rapidly synthesizing new information and new workflows

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, both written and verbal, particularly the ability to offer guidance and criticism in a positive and constructive manner

• Demonstrated experience engaging with and influencing external collaborators and other internal departments

• Familiarity with information and technology concepts including metadata (e.g. PBCore), data formats (e.g. csv, XML, JSON), linked data (e.g. RDF) distributed version control (e.g. Git/GitHub), indexing (e.g. Solr), digital library software (e.g. Blacklight), databases (e.g. Mysql, FileMaker), and data access via APIs

• An appreciation for and an understanding of the public media landscape

• Familiarity with programming languages (e.g. Python, Ruby) indexing (e.g. Solr, Elasticsearch) databases (Mysql, FileMaker, PostgreSQL).

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

Master's degree in Library and Information Science or equivalent work experience required. 2 to 3 years of related work experience required.

Certification (or desire to be certified) in Agile Project Management preferred.

Preferred Experience

• 2-3 years’ experience coordinating successful projects

• Experience managing development teams in a scrum environment

• Experience with development and mapping of data models for repositories

• Experience managing repositories, including a strong understanding of Samvera solution bundles

• Experience working with large scale, complex datasets

• Experience or familiarity with Media processing, and machine learning tools