Below, I share the text from a (now closed!) digital humanities research developer search I led for the Scholars’ Lab in 2017, as I’ve heard from colleagues who subsequently used this post and the associated job ad as models for increasing diversity in tech hiring.

You might have seen our opening for a Senior Developer—we’re now seeking an additional colleague for our R&D team: DH Developer! Apply here (posting number #0621212), or read on for more information.

We welcome applications from women, people of color, LGBTQ, and others who are traditionally underrepresented among software developers. In particular, we invite you to contact us even if you do not currently consider yourself to be a software developer. We seek someone with the ability to collaborate and to expand their technical skill set in creative ways.

This is a full-time position, with flexibility to help you achieve a healthy work-life balance. Like all our team members, this role includes 20% of your time devoted to your own research initiatives and professional development. This “personal R&D” time includes  access to our experimental humanities makerspace, other high-end facilities, and expert collaborators and mentors.

About us

The University of Virginia Library is the hub of a lively and growing community of practice in technology and the humanities, arts, and social sciences. As part of that community, the Scholars’ Lab has risen to international pre-eminence as a library-based center for digital humanities. The Scholars’ Lab collaborates with faculty, librarians, and students on a range of projects and tools, including spatial humanities, interface design, innovative pedagogy, data visualization, text analysis, digital archiving, 3D modeling, virtual reality and gaming, and other experimental humanities approaches.

The Library and the Scholars’ Lab are committed to diversity, inclusion, and safe spaces, and we have focused recent speaker series and practice on accessibility and social justice (check out our team-authored charter for more on our values). We welcome curious, critical, and compassionate professionals who are keenly interested in the overlaps between technology and the humanities (literature, history, art, cultural heritage, and related fields).

The Scholars’ Lab currently consists of 11 staffers (plus a senior developer role), as well as an amazing cohort of graduate fellows and makerspace technicians.

Anticipated salary range: $65,000-75,000, plus benefits such as professional development/conference travel funding, health insurance, and retirement savings plan

Responsibilities

Under the direction of the Head of R&D for the Scholars’ Lab in the UVA Library, the DH Developer

  • works with scholars from the humanities and social sciences to understand their needs and define project goals

  • provides professional opinions on appropriate project deliverables and reasonable schedules for completion of projects

  • collaborates on building applications that enable scholars and library users to collect, manage, produce, manipulate, or analyze digital information resources in interesting ways

  • writes original code, and tests and improves on existing code

  • learns about and engages with new technologies toward widening and deepening the Scholars’ Lab’s pool of staff expertise

  • creates documentation for both internal Lab and external non-technical audience use

Qualifications

Minimum requirements:

  1. Experience equivalent to one full-time year with either a programming language (such as—but not limited to—PHP, Ruby, Python, Java), or HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

  2. 2 years of web development experience, with tech skills demonstrated in an accessible portfolio of work.

  3. Familiarity with a code version control system such as Git.

  4. Ability to work and communicate with technical and non-technical collaborators.

  5. Either education through the master’s level or equivalent experience through your job, hobbies, or other activities, preferably in the humanities or library/information science.

  6. Interest in the humanities (literature, history, art, cultural heritage, etc.)

Preferred:

  1. Graduate degree or equivalent professional or other experience in the humanities or social sciences.

  2. Knowledge of and interest in the digital humanities.

  3. Experience with collaborative project work.

  4. Experience with any of the following: data collections, analysis, visualization, and interpretation; front-end web development and design; back-end web development; systems and database management; text analysis or image analysis methods and tools; frameworks such as Rails, Django, and Zend; TEI, XML, Solr, Cocoon, Tomcat.

  5. Experience taking initiative to suggest or begin new projects, and to carry out projects with little supervision.

Interested?

You can apply here (posting number #0621212), but please feel free to reach out with any questions—for yourself or a friend—by emailing (address) or tweeting (Scholars’ Lab Twitter account) or (personal Twitter account). In particular, we’re very happy to talk with anyone who’s interested, but not sure whether they have the required technical background. All job discussions will be treated as confidential.