Herc-Higher Education Recruitment Consortium

Do you want to advance humanistic research through software? Are you a humanities researcher who loves to write code to solve problems? Are you a software engineer who wants to move more slowly and tackle research questions? If so, consider applying to join the Center for Digital Humanities (CDH) at Princeton as our new Senior Research Software Engineer (RSE).

As Senior RSE, you will be an integral member of CDH’s work to design and implement high-quality, sustainable software to further innovative research in the humanities and the data-driven or computational sciences. You will work closely with CDH Lead Developer and other research software team members, and will collaborate with faculty, student, and campus partners to help translate research priorities into software needs, including analyzing data, implementing models or simulations, and developing software modules or tools. You will consult with Princeton scholars individually or in small groups to discuss their research and recommend appropriate approaches and solutions. You’ll have the opportunity for technical leadership on collaborations that align with your expertise, and contribute to research articles, presentations, and course modules.

If you have a strong background in programming, academic research, and an interest in the humanities you have the right skill set to make an immediate impact, and will be poised to expand your expertise into new domains. We are looking for someone with demonstrated expertise in at least one technical approach or methodology relevant to humanities research, but we are flexible on the specifics. The interests and experience you bring to CDH will benefit existing projects, and will help recruit new partners for future collaborations.

This position reports to the CDH Lead Developer and qualifies for 20% R&D time. It is a full time, full benefits, onsite position.

Job duties and responsibilities

• Advanced Digital Humanities software engineering
  • Build, test, debug, and document research software.
  • Contribute to maintenance and updates for existing research software as needed
  • Analyze, transform, migrate, and process data and metadata
  • Participate in code review and contribute to team best practices
• Project management, planning, technical leadership
  • Translate research goals into software deliverables; analyze requirements, design software, information architecture
  • Estimate effort required and time to completion
  • When serving as Technical Lead, determine approach and tooling; set standards within the project; review and manage all code contributions to the project
• Participate in CDH curricular initiatives
  • Teaching or co-teaching workshops to share technical expertise
  • Develop teaching modules based on DH research projects or approaches
  • Advise on integrating technical or data-driven work into courses
• Outreach and service
  • Publish essays and give presentations to promote the work of CDH on the Princeton campus and to the broader DH community
  • Participate on campus working groups and committees as appropriate to technical and domain expertise
• Serve as a methodological and technical expert to the University community through consultations.
  • Advise students and faculty on best practices and solutions for DH research; help to scope work and suggest technologies for data-driven research
• Participate in departmental meetings, colloquia, working groups, etc.
  • Attend and contribute to monthly staff meetings, reporting on research work
  • Actively participate in colloquia and working groups, including reading and discussing research articles, sharing and critiquing research projects, etc.
• R&D
  • Work on a personal research and development projects that push the boundaries of digital humanities development.

Essential qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent; Graduate-level research (MA or PhD) in a Humanities or related discipline preferred.
• Experience with humanities research and ability to communicate with humanities researchers, computer scientists, and data scientists.
• Minimum five years experience, with similar responsibilities, working in a similar environment that includes complex software systems, object-oriented programming, web based applications and services, and distributed architecture.
• Strong programming skills, particularly in one or more languages typically used for computational humanities research and data analysis (Python preferred).
• Demonstrated experience with development best practices.
• Demonstrated expertise with at least one skill set or methodology relevant to computational and data-driven humanities research, such as text analysis, natural language processing, or machine learning
• Demonstrated experience with data modeling and data structures (relational databases, XML, RDF, etc) in order to recommend and develop appropriate data structures for projects.
• Strong oral and written communication skills; ability to clearly communicate technical information effectively to collaborators with a range of technical proficiency.
• Demonstrated success working in a collaborative software development environment as well as independently.
• Ability to manage projects and multiple priorities.
• Ability to learn and apply new systems and technologies.

Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. EEO IS THE LAW

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