Software Engineering Manager

Description

Software Engineering Manager

About the Role

We are seeking an experienced Software Engineering Manager with strong technical leadership skills to join DataCite’s distributed team. In this hands-on role, you will be responsible for contributing to the leadership of technical delivery across DataCite’s infrastructure and services, including leading development for the Research Organization Registry (ROR) project.

About DataCite

Founded in 2009, DataCite is a leading global non-profit organization that provides persistent identifiers (DOIs) for research outputs and resources. As a community, we make research more effective with metadata that connects research outputs and resources–from samples and images to data and preprints. We enable the creation and management of persistent identifiers (PIDs), integrate services to improve research workflows, and facilitate the discovery and reuse of research outputs and resources. Learn more at: https://datacite.org 

About ROR

The Research Organization Registry (ROR) is a community-led initiative to create an open, sustainable, and globally adopted identifier for every research organization worldwide. ROR is jointly operated by DataCite along with California Digital Library and Crossref. Learn more at: https://ror.org 

Key responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and support a distributed team of software engineers working across DataCite and ROR infrastructure and services.
• Guide software architecture and technical direction, ensuring quality, scalability, and maintainability.
• Develop full-stack product features in an open-source software environment, including user-facing front-end services and backend APIs.
• Ensure reliable and resilient services through best practices in testing, monitoring, and reacting to problems.
• Collaborate with product and community teams to define and deliver roadmap priorities.
• Facilitate performance reviews, provide feedback and support the professional development of team members.
• Help to improve engineering processes and tools to increase team effectiveness

Requirements

• Knowledge and/or experience in designing and implementing technical solutions that support open scholarly infrastructure.
• Proven experience managing or leading software engineering teams, ideally in distributed and open-source environments.
• Strong technical background with hands-on experience developing, deploying, and maintaining production web applications, including system administration, error tracking, and support
• Proficiency with a variety of languages, such as Ruby, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, Go, ideally with experience of Ruby on Rails and/or Django or other similar web frameworks. 
• Familiar with front end technologies, both fundamental web technologies HTML/CSS/JavaScript but also frameworks such as React/NextJs.
• Familiarity with relational databases (MySQL) and search engines such as OpenSearch.
• Familiarity with DevOps practices, Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, and cloud providers (AWS)
• Excellent communication skills and the flexibility that is needed for working in a small, distributed team.

Nice to haves

• Experience with performance investigation and optimisation.
• Experience in working with big data technologies.
• Background in utilizing LLMs to address incomplete and data inconsistencies.

Why work for us

• Fully remote position.
• Competitive local salary.
• 30 days vacation time annually and 1 day paid extra for volunteer work of your choice.
• Flexible working hours.
• Option to work in co-working with a paid contribution from us.
• Opportunity to learn something new every day, we are an evolving community and team
• Adaptable – We embrace change and uncertainty and work together to adapt to new situations

To apply

Please send a resume and statement of interest to Sarala Wimalaratne (hr@datacite.org). We only accept applications by individuals. We would like the candidate to start as soon as possible. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions.
Applications will be considered on a rolling basis, starting with interviews from 15 June 2025.