Are you looking for a challenging job in a dynamic team? The Humanities Labs of the Faculty of Humanities are looking for an enthusiastic and experienced Data Engineer for Full Stack Development in the Humanities Labs. The post holder will play a key role in developing the links between the research schools within the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR) and the new Data Science Centre (DSC) at the University of Amsterdam. You will work within a highly successful research environment within the Humanities Labs that covers new (3D) media, digital innovation and advanced computational methods for humanities research. The Humanities Labs bring together scholars in world-leading departments within the Faculty with a long-standing tradition of using advanced digital methods and the ever-growing amount of cultural and social data, including scholars from Media Studies, History, Arts and Culture, and the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation.

Your workspace at the Humanities Labs of the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research will be the basis from which you collaborate with researchers in those departments, while one day a week you join the other DSC data scientists and engineers at the University Library.

We envision the work of the Data Engineer for Full Stack Development to connect with the full range of expertise areas and lines of research at the Humanities Labs, integrating a wide spectrum of Humanities research fields collaborating in a single creative space. The engineer will specifically support these labs in their data collection, analysis and management. Important aspects are the contribution to the production of FAIR and well-structured clean datasets which are crucial for state-of-the-art research.

What are you going to do?
Humanities data engineering – creating datasets and data analysis and management infrastructures for complex and often visual datasets – has become a key component of digital humanities projects. The work of the data engineer requires advanced solutions, and the data engineer can learn from the approaches in other sciences based at DSC. At the same time, we also believe that humanities data engineering has specific wider contributions to make through its own research agenda in this field such as the visual analysis of complex human data. The post is an essential building block and forms the necessary backbone to publish novel data visualization pipelines, make datasets available online in an easy-to-use-way and provide a bridge to cultural institutions in Amsterdam and beyond.

Your tasks and responsibilities:

• Support the development of backend software infrastructure for data collection, analysis and management in the humanities.
• Work with community efforts such as CLARIAH/SSH-cloud to publish data management and analysis pipelines and share best practices across disciplines.
• Support the development of large-scale collaborative research grants in data-driven research for the Humanities Labs.
• Provide a backend platform and promote actively to the UvA data publications in the Humanities – possibly in collaboration with journals such as the Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Brill) or the Journal of Open Humanities Data (Ubiquity Press).
• A significant contribution to the construction of a public platform for showcasing, collecting, or analysing research output of the faculty. Ideally, this is done by contributing code and infrastructure as modules or packages to the eScience's Research Software Directory.

You have advanced knowledge of designing and developing data infrastructure as well as building data pipelines. You are capable of setting up back-end infrastructures such as storage space, databases and analytic workflows. The engineer we are looking for will develop advanced facilities and be able to deal with cultural sources in various modalities, e.g., textual, (audio-)visual and 3D; requiring familiarity with state-of-the-art developments in the field. The engineer should also be able to see beyond specific applications and overview a complete data pipeline.

Knowledge of social media platforms, experience in processing data through APIs and web scraping is also essential, including an understanding of the legal/ethical position of such work. You look forward to working in interdisciplinary teams with other data engineers, data scientists and researchers in the DSC and beyond and to further developing your expertise and skillset.

Your experience and profile:

• A MA or MSc in Data Science, Digital Humanities, or in another discipline with a relevant specialisation. The degree must have been obtained by the time the position starts;
• Track record of experience of working with web, social media, historical, linguistic and cultural data;
• Advanced skills in designing and developing data infrastructure;
• Knowledge of relevant frameworks for building data pipelines and analytic workflows;
• Experience with workflow management software;
• Excellent social and communication skills;
• Good written and oral command of both Dutch (at NT2 level) and English;
• Customer-friendly and problem-solving approach, works accurately and independently.

Applicants are expected to be experienced in building and managing data environments and creating software to populate and query them.

We offer a temporary employment contract for a period of 1 year with a probationary period of two months. Preferred starting date is 01 December 2023. The employment contract is for 38 hours a week. Upon positive evaluation and satisfactory performance, you will be offered a permanent contract.

The gross monthly salary, based on 38 hours per week and relevant experience, ranges between € 4,332 to € 5,929. This sum does not include the 8% holiday allowance and the 8,3% year-end allowance. A favourable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities is applicable.

What else do we offer?

• excellent possibilities for further professional development and education;
• an enthusiastic, inspiring and professional academic team;
• the opportunity to collaborate with leading researchers at research institutes that - partly as a result of their interdisciplinary approach - are world renowned.

Faculty of Humanities

The University of Amsterdam is the Netherlands' largest university, offering the widest range of academic programmes. At the UvA, 42,000 students, 6,000 staff members and 3,000 PhD candidates study and work in a diverse range of fields, connected by a culture of curiosity.

The Faculty of Humanities provides education and conducts research with a strong international profile in a large number of disciplines in de field of language and culture. Located in the heart of Amsterdam, the faculty maintains close ties with many cultural institutes in the capital city. Research and teaching staff focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and are active in several teaching programmes.

Want to know more about our organisation? Read more about working at the University of Amsterdam.