[Matthew K. Gold (he/him)]

https://recruiting.ultipro.com/ITH1000ITHAK/JobBoard/5fe90ad4-9e26-490b-9c45-6c9669d4dcd0/OpportunityDetail?opportunityId=b8ec7423-d3a5-4c14-83c4-30d5146b155e

Software Engineer, JSTOR Labs

*Software Engineer, JSTOR Labs*

*Ann Arbor, MI*

Do you believe everyone should have affordable access to knowledge and
higher education? Join the ITHAKA team and help make that vision a reality.
*The Role*

This Software Engineer will be a member of the JSTOR Labs team (
https://labs.jstor.org). The Labs team tests out new ideas by partnering
with publishers, libraries, and scholars to create experimental tools for
research and teaching. These prototypes are released and refined as beta
tools. When they show promise, the Labs Software Engineer will play a key
role in evolving them into hardened, scalable full-fledged applications and
services for public use.

Our organization and this role are unique and will provide you with an
opportunity few other places can offer including:

– Working on a tight-knit team rapidly developing innovative tools and
services for the academic community.
– Access to the JSTOR corpus of rich content and “big data” in the
development of tools and applications.
– Ability to leverage and improve the bleeding-edge technology stack
used by the JSTOR platform.
– Ability to have a large impact, due to the high traffic and visibility
JSTOR has, combined with playing a pivotal role in bringing the JSTOR Labs’
team’s innovation to that platform.

The Labs Software Engineer will be part of a small (5 member) distributed
team. The team is highly collaborative but also works closely with the
entire ITHAKA/JSTOR organization and with external teams and organizations.
As a member of the Labs team and ITHAKA organization, the Labs Software
Engineer will have access to a diverse, knowledgeable and helpful group of
colleagues.
*Specific Objectives and Responsibilities*

It is expected that the applications developed will take advantage of APIs
and infrastructure provided by the core JSTOR platform. During an
incubation period, Labs applications will be maintained and administered by
the Labs Software Engineer and the rest of the Labs team. This work may
include the development and maintenance of back-end services (including API
development), data analysis (such as LDA topic modeling), content
enrichment, and search index generation.

As a member of the Labs team, the Labs Software Engineer will be involved
in all phases of product discovery and delivery. During discovery, the Labs
Software Engineer will have an active role in the identification and
validation of ideas. In this capacity, occasional travel (4-6 times per
year) may be required, most often to our New York City office. For those
ideas proven to have merit, the Labs Software Engineer will, under the
direction of the Labs tech lead, productize the components needed to bring
the product or service to millions of JSTOR users.
*Challenges You’ll Overcome*

This role requires the ability to work on a team that is continually
pushing into unfamiliar territory and interested in rapid learning. The
goal is to quickly understand a problem space and identify and validate
possible solutions as rapidly as possible. It requires confidence not only
in one’s ability, but that of the team, and the process. The position
requires a high degree of flexibility, self-motivation, and teamwork. The
Labs Software Engineer will need to be able to translate the Labs
prototypes into highly scalable services and apps that operate with the
continuous integration, micro-services architecture of the JSTOR platform.
*Skills, Experience, and Characteristics*

The successful candidate will possess a high level of natural curiosity, be
eager to learn, and have an inclination to action. The role will often
involve moving forward on concepts that are only loosely defined. An
individual that is self-motivated and able to work with relatively
high-level direction will do best in this role.

This position involves “full-stack” development skills, and in this role,
the Labs Software Engineer will be expected to work with both back-end and
front-end technologies. Some prior experience with the full range of
technologies commonly found in a complete application is desired. While it
is expected that the Labs Software Engineer will contribute to development
work in all areas, in this specific position expect that algorithm
development, optimization/refinement and testing will be a key areas of
focus. A few specific examples include:

1. Refinement of existing algorithms used in confidence scoring of a
fuzzy quote matching application
2. Refinement of algorithms and models used for identifying/inferring
topics from texts of arbitrary size, with special attention to the
development of approaches for performing model-based inferencing of
multi-lingual content.
3. Development of approaches for named entity recognition, filtering,
and disambiguation.

Below is a list of skills and technology experience that would be
desirable, but the more important characteristic is an eagerness and a
demonstrated ability to learn new skills quickly.

*Programming languages and operating systems*

– Python

– Javascript

– Java

– Unix/Linux/MacOSX

*Tools*

– Git

*Web app development*

– Django

– Django REST Framework (for API development)

– Node

*Backend*

– SOLR/Lucene or ElasticSearch

– Experience with GraphQL and/or Sparql servers a plus

*Javascript frameworks*

– Vue and/or Nuxt

– Webpack

*Mobile development*

– Using responsive design and development techniques, possibly including
the use of Progressive Web Application (PWA) techniques and technologies

*Other*

– Topic modeling (ideally using Mallet)

– Video formats and metadata (for both archiving and streaming)

– RDF, JSON-LD, Sparql and GraphQL for knowledge graph development and use

– Hadoop Map/Reduce (ideally using AWS EMR)

– Content markup including: XML, ePUB, PDF

– Named Entity Recognition (NER)

– Experience applying statistics, modeling, and machine learning

– Familiarity with frameworks such as Tensorflow, scikit-learn, pandas,
and/or Spark-MLLib

*Work for us*

*Come join our team of talented and dedicated people with great ideas who
want to make the world a smarter place. Individuals will be rewarded with
excellent career development and a fantastic benefits package that
includes:*

– Choice of two medical plans, one at no cost to the employee
– Employer paid dental, vision, life insurance, and employee assistance
programs
– Employer contributed retirement and much, much more

*How to apply:*

Interested candidates can submit their resume, a detailed cover letter, and
salary requirements.

ITHAKA is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.
*Our Organization*

As a not-for-profit organization, we care deeply about our mission. We work
with leaders in the global higher education community to advance and
preserve knowledge, to improve teaching and learning through the use of
digital technologies, and to help broaden access to higher education by
reducing the cost while also improving student outcomes. We are passionate
about the value of education and are driven to help our universities,
colleges, and high schools become better, more affordable, and more
effective, and to reach beyond these traditional walls to support learners
everywhere.

In two decades, we have launched some of the most transformative and widely
used services in higher education: JSTOR, Portico, and Ithaka S+R. In
addition, ITHAKA recently entered into a strategic alliance with Artstor
and furthers a number of Artstor’s initiatives. Our 300+ employees work
closely with our user communities, day in and day out, to build and
continuously improve upon these services, and to identify new opportunities
to expand access to knowledge and learning. As a successful, growing
organization in a demanding and dynamic environment, we challenge ourselves
to retain an entrepreneurial spirit that pursues and embraces change.

ITHAKA is headquartered in New York, New York with additional offices in
Ann Arbor, Michigan and Princeton, New Jersey and provides legal oversight
and services for, Artstor, also located in New York, New York. We also
manage a subsidiary, Ithaka International, LLC., to expand our impact
globally.

Mission and Funding

We are proud to be a not-for-profit organization, but our status is a
reflection of our mission, not our funding model. Our work across these
services is highly valued in the global higher education community, and we
cover our costs by collecting fees in exchange for the access,
preservation, and research and consulting services we provide. That exerts
a real discipline on our operations in that we must continually adapt to
the needs of our audiences to be worthy of their support. Thousands of
higher education and related institutions around the world are ITHAKA’s
primary financial supporters; their JSTOR participation fees provide 88% of
ITHAKA’s revenue. Our 99% renewal rate for JSTOR generates stable recurring
income, alleviating the dependency on fundraising that many not-for-profits
experience. Because the organizations share our commitment to our mission,
we have the financial resources necessary to maintain a great work
environment that encourages innovation and excellence.

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