Application Developer (museum)

With a collecting history that extends back to 1755, the Princeton University Art Museum is one of the leading university art museums in the country, with collections that have grown to include more than 113,000 works of art ranging from ancient to contemporary art and spanning the globe. Committed to advancing Princeton’s teaching and research missions, the Art Museum also serves as a gateway to the University for visitors worldwide. To learn more about the Princeton University Art Museum, visit artmuseum.princeton.edu.

The Museum welcomes applications for the role of Museum Application Developer, a cornerstone position in the Museum's ongoing and evolving collections information systems initiatives. Reporting to the Associate Director for Communication & Information, the Museum Application Developer will be deeply engaged in the development and execution of a new Museum-wide digital strategy in preparation for (1) a full migration of the Museum’s website in 2023 and (2) the opening of a new building in late 2024.

The Museum Application Developer will be responsible for building and maintaining a data abstraction layer and conversion tools for art collections and exhibitions data; building and maintaining open APIs to collections and image data; and overseeing the use of cloud services provided by Amazon and Acquia. The Museum Application Developer will have an understanding of metadata standards, data models, and data encodings that relate to cultural heritage collections, such as schema.org, CIDOC-crm, and JSON-ld.

The Museum Application Developer will:

• design, develop, and implement tools and systems for processing and transforming the museum's collections and exhibitions data from SQLserver tables to JSON, JSON-ld, and other RDF formats. They will establish and maintain a RESTful API for open access to collections data and will maintain and monitor the Museum's Github repositories. The Museum Application Developer is responsible for configuring and maintaining an EC2 instance running Elasticsearch for the indexing of collections and exhibitions data. They are responsible for performance testing optimization of index and search.
• implement and optimize International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) image and presentation APIs for the delivery of cultural heritage images and other media. Data mapping and scripting of collections and exhibitions information to IIIF compliant JSON-ld manifests, drawing from SQL server tables in both the Museum's collections and image management databases. The Museum Application Developer will script daily processes of image upload to cloud servers, automating the generation of JPEG2000 derivatives for IIIF compliance. 
• as part of the collections information team, design and configure tools for faculty and students, as well as the general public, for optimal utilization of the Museum's collections information. This will include online tools for optimizing search results, gathering images and data for download, visualizations from museum data, and the development of image viewers and tools for special presentations of artworks and interactive scholarship. 
• document all development of software and system architecture.
• contribute to strategic planning as it relates to collections information systems.

Essential Qualifications

• Experience
  • developing and deploying production quality applications and complex, interoperable systems
  • with one or more modern programming languages such as Ruby, PHP, Python, or Javascript
  • developing and modifying web applications and command-line shell programs
  • with theory and practice of relational databases such as SQL Server
  • developing and deploying production systems in a Linux environment
  • with configuring and deploying open source and commercial software such as Elasticsearch and Drupal
  • with cloud-based services such as Amazon and Acquia
• Familiarity with
  • the Linux command line and shells (e.g., bash)
  • version control systems and collaborative development systems (e.g., Git/Github, SVN)
• Proficient in Mac, PC, and Linux environments
• Excellent communication skills - written and verbal
• Ability to work effectively in a team context, establish priorities, and achieve goals
• Bachelor's degree

Preferred Qualifications

• Understanding of
  • metadata standards, data models, and data encodings that relate to art collections, such as Dublin Core, EAD, IIIF, RDF/Linked Data, REST
  • image formats, metadata, and scripting services to automate large-batch generation of image derivatives
  • International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) specifications
• Three+ years of experience in the cultural heritage sector

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