Software Engineer - Transfer Explorer

Description

The Role

ITHAKA is looking for a Software Engineer to join the JSTOR Labs team at ITHAKA, a highly-successful non-profit with a mission to expand access to knowledge and education around the world. As Software Engineer, you will have a pivotal role in building the Transfer Explorer pilot application. The Transfer Explorer is a collaboration between Ithaka S+R and JSTOR Labs which aims to make it easy for students, school administrators, and advisors to see how earned credits and prior learning experiences will transfer and count toward a degree at a new institution. Building on a concept initially piloted at City University of New York, the team is now creating a universal version of the tool that will be able to help students everywhere. 

The Software Engineer will work with backend and frontend engineering specialists, UX researchers, and field-leading subject matter experts within Ithaka S+R to build the best possible Transfer Explorer experience for data providers and student users alike. You will collaborate with fellow engineers and our data integration partners at the DXtera Institute to build flexible, reliable, and replicable pipelines and validation tooling for rapidly ingesting and searching data from a growing number of onboarding Transfer Explorer partner institutions. You will also work with policy and product researchers to use insights from  institutional and usage data to play a role in deciding larger product features, strategy, and goals.

The Software Engineer will report to the JSTOR Labs’ Manager of Engineering and join a dynamic and creative team of engineers, UX researchers, and business strategists incubating a variety of novel products. Our engineers play an active role in contributing technical know-how and domain experience into shaping Labs’ new initiatives. Other work may include rapid prototyping sprints pairing with our team and outside partners, or rotating on to growing projects as they mature. As a member of the larger engineering organization within ITHAKA, you will have the chance to learn from experts in software and data engineering, machine learning, and systems architecture working on the leading-edge technology stack used by the JSTOR platform, and be able to have a large impact on the worldwide community that ITHAKA serves.

Responsibilities

As part of the Transfer Explorer team, you will:

• Learn the landscape of higher education student information systems and the data needs of our student-facing applications.
• Collaborate with DXtera Institute to develop flexible and expressive data services, leveraging and augmenting DXtera’s existing data models.  Establish program requirements and transfer data that can accommodate the evolving functionalities of Transfer Explorer and related tools.
• Develop documentation and automated tooling to help onboarding new institutional partners into the program, validating their existing data, identifying needed enhancements, and speeding institutional adoption of the Transfer Explorer tool.
• Use your deep knowledge of the data, creative problem solving skills, and initiative to identify opportunities for new application features and improvements.
• Leverage ITHAKA’s enterprise-level data, logging, and analytics solutions via AWS and Databricks to combine institutional data with application usage data in ways that support user experience research as well as domain research by Ithaka S+R.

Experience and Skills

Required

• 2-3 years experience building robust data ingestion and validation pipelines that feed heterogeneous data into relational databases such as Postgres, MySQL, Oracle.
• Advanced proficiency with SQL.
• Knowledge of at least one high-level scripting language such as Python, R, or JavaScript.
• Ability to work as a close and empathetic collaborator across a multifunctional team including backend developers, UX designers, product managers, and subject-matter experts.
• Committed to our organizational values of belonging, evidence, speed, teamwork, and trust.

The preferred experience or skills listed below are valuable, but ITHAKA encourages candidates to apply if they possess the required skills, even if they do not have the specific experience or skills listed below.

• Familiarity with the higher education sector and student information systems; working with course registration systems, credits and program related data.
• Experience with search-focused databases such as Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Lucene, Solr.
• Experience with ML model training and deployment to power recommendation engines.

Work Authorization and Sponsorship 

ITHAKA is not currently considering candidates who require any type of immigration sponsorship (additional work authorization or permanent work authorization) now or in the future to work in the United States.

Compensation and Benefits

At ITHAKA we believe in openness and equity. Part of living those values is our commitment to clarity about salary ranges, so candidates know what to expect. The starting salary for this position ranges from $97,000 to 121,000 per year. Starting pay may vary with job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. At present, our total compensation package for benefits-eligible employees includes medical, dental, and vision plans, an employer-paid 10% retirement contribution, paid parental and caregiver leave, 22 days of paid time off, 11 paid holidays, up to 12 sick days, wellness benefits, and more. Please note that ITHAKA, at its discretion, may make changes to its benefits programs from time to time. #LI-JS1 #LI-REMOTE

Work for ITHAKA 

We are committed to our organizational values of belonging, evidence, speed, teamwork,  and trust. We take inclusion seriously. Belonging is one of our core values, and it shows in our vibrant culture. People from a wide range of backgrounds work at ITHAKA, and we believe that unique perspectives help us realize new insights and build better solutions.

We want to work with people who are passionate about ideas like these and who wish to contribute their perspectives and talents to ITHAKA’s mission. We enthusiastically welcome applications from people of all underrepresented backgrounds and credentials. We want to hear your story and include your perspective in the transformative work we aim to do.

Learn more about Working at ITHAKA.

Apply Now:

Although ITHAKA has physical offices in New York and Ann Arbor, Michigan, our employees are distributed across the continental United States. At this time, we’re not considering candidates who are unable to work and reside in the continental U.S.

Candidates may apply by submitting an application online through our career site, if you have any questions about your application, please contact us at careers@ithaka.org.  ITHAKA is committed to providing reasonable accommodations, if there’s anything we can do to accommodate any portion of the application or hiring process, please contact us at accommodations@ithaka.org. 

We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer.  All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, domestic violence victim status, veteran status, disability, history of disability or perceived disability, or other status protected by law. We invite you to read our Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Statement. ITHAKA cares about your privacy, learn more about our Applicant Privacy Notice.