Applications Developer

Description

Reporting to the Head of Software Development & Library Systems, the Applications Developer contributes to the technical design and development for all end user applications developed by the UCLA Library. The incumbent works collaboratively with other members of the Software Development unit, as well as with colleagues in the Digital Library Program, and stakeholders in various units across the Library and the Film & Television Archive.

The Software Developer is a member of the Software Development & Library Systems (SDLS) unit. The SDLS unit is comprised of 10 Software Developers, 3 Sysadmins, and 2 UX Designers, who are grouped into three development sub-teams: 1) the Applications Team, which builds end-user applications, 2) the Services Team, which builds backend services and APIs used by internal and external applications; 3) the Systems Team, which builds internal applications and middleware, manages COTS systems, and performs experimental projects. In addition to the four development sub-teams, SDLS also includes the Dev Support Team (systems administrators) and the UX Team. Members from those two groups are embedded in the three development teams. The unit follows a Kanban method of Agile development, wherein each sub-team meets weekly for backlog grooming and the entire unit meets for daily standups and monthly retrospectives. The unit strives for a DevOps culture of collaboration, feedback & improvement, and continual learning. Evidence of this culture includes stakeholders participating in backlog grooming and standups, regular monitoring of retrospective action items, and team-wide isolated time for learning and experimentation. The team also embraces a remote-first culture, with permanently remote members across 4 time zones.
The Software Development & Library Systems unit is part of the Digital Initiatives and Information Technology (DIIT) department, which is comprised of over 50 staff members in five functional units: 1) the Software Development Team, as described above, 2) the Core Ops Team, which supports the network and manages the servers and storage in the datacenter, 3) the Core Services Team which provides IT hardware support and enterprise application support to Library staff and lends laptops and other hardware to students, 4) the Data Science Center which provides training, consultation, and a data repository for campus researchers, and 5) the Digital Library Program which works with partners, both internal to UCLA and across the globe, to execute projects that digitize, describe, and publish archival materials.

As a member of the Applications Team, the Applications Developer's primary responsibility is development of public user interfaces, including the main Library website, the Film & Television Archive website, and several Digital Library collection applications. We have multiple legacy applications, primarily built with either Blacklight (Ruby on Rails + Solr) or with Drupal. The team's new stack is Vue.js and Nuxt.js along with ElasticSearch, and content will be migrated into the new applications to consolidate the toolset and the portfolio of supported applications.