BACKGROUND

The Open Tree of Life project (http://opentreeoflife.org) is collaborative project across 10 institutions that aims to build a comprehensive tree of the evolutionary history of all species. This is a high-profile project, recently featured in the New York Times science section. We seek a software architect fro design and develop software and to manage overall software efforts. This position will be based at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) (http://nescent.org), with salary and benefits provided through Duke University. NESCent is an NSF-funded research center dedicated to cross-disciplinary research in evolutionary science. The successful candidate will benefit from co-localization with the NESCent Informatics team, which develops new methods for assembly, analysis, visualization and sharing of Big Data in evolutionary biology.

RESPONSIBILITIES

This position will be approximately 50% software architecture / development and 50% management of software development. Developers on the Open Tree project will include staff programmers, contractors on user interface design, university faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Development projects include a database-driven web application for annotation and visualization of evolutionary data and for transfer of data packages between digital repositories.

REQUIREMENTS

Bachelor's degree in Biology, Computer Science, Information and Library Sciences, or a related field. Experience with management of distributed software teams; use of project management software to track issues and milestones; knowledge of database systems; demonstrated ability to quickly learn new technologies; familiarity with Linux.

PREFERENCES

Masters or Ph.D. degree with two or more years of professional software development experience; biology background or experience; database design and development - relational or document-based; experience with open-source software development, knowledge of metadata annotation and standards; semantically enhanced metadata (e.g. RDFa); description and exchange of Web resources (e.g., OAI-ORE); programming with graphical toolkits.

TERMS

This is a full time position.

LOCALE

Durham, North Carolina, USA

COMPENSATION

The designer will be an employee of Duke University, and be entitled to Duke's generous benefits. Salary will be competitive and commensurate with experience.

HOW TO APPLY

Please send a CV, and a cover letter to Dr. Karen Cranston, Informatics Project Manager (karen.cranston[at]nescent.org). Informal inquiries welcome.

DEADLINE

Position will remain open until filled, but review of applications will begin August 6.