Senior software engineer DANS

Are you an experienced technical professional ready to contribute to large-scale international projects in the field of open science? Do you have a strong background in software engineering, and are you motivated to help advance FAIR data infrastructures in Europe? Then this position may be a perfect fit for you.

DANS’ Technology section is looking for a Senior Software Engineer.

What will you be doing?

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will primarily work within the context of European-funded projects such as EOSC Data Commons. You will lead tasks and work packages focused on research data infrastructure, metadata quality and FAIR assessment, and metadata services within the EOSC Federation.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Designing and developing software tools and applications to support FAIR data access, metadata harvesting, and data quality assessment.
• Designing, building, deploying and maintaining RESTful web-services in Python (e.g. FastAPI).
• Building and maintaining container-based back- and front-end components using Python and JavaScript.
• Managing data structures across various database systems: relational (PostgreSQL) and triplestores (e.g. GraphDB, Fuseki).
• Contributing to technical innovations in Linked Data, workflow orchestration, application containerization, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Collaborating with international partners in EU-funded EOSC initiatives, including projects such as Data Commons and EDEN to design, develop, and integrate interoperable software components supporting federated open science infrastructures.
• Leading project work packages, monitoring progress and milestones, ensuring the timely delivery of project deliverables, and contributing to reporting and dissemination tasks.
• Working with the open-source Dataverse repository software, and interacting with the APIs from platforms such as DataCite, OpenAIRE, 4TU.ResearchData and Skosmos.
• Representing DANS in national and international project meetings and maintaining strong stakeholder relationships.

What will you bring to the table?

You hold a master’s degree in a relevant field (e.g. computer science, engineering). You have a minimum of five years of experience in both software engineering and project-based work in international research environments.

In addition, you will bring the following knowledge and skills:

• Proven experience in software development with Python and JavaScript.
• Experience with version control systems such as Git and GitHub.
• Experience with containers, cloud deployment, and HPC environments.
• Experience with structured and semantic data models and technologies, including RDF, SKOS, SHACL, and SPARQL, as well as knowledge representation.

Are considered a plus:

• Experience in leading tasks or work packages in EU-funded projects.
• Affinity with open science, FAIR data, metadata standards, and research data infrastructures (e.g. EOSC, European Data Spaces).
• Must be fluent in English; understanding of Dutch is a plus.

About DANS

DANS is the national expertise center and repository for research data. We help researchers make their data available for reuse. This allows researchers to use the data for new research and makes published research verifiable and reproducible. With almost 300.000 datasets and a staff of fifty, DANS is one of the leading repositories in Europe. DANS is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Working at DANS means working in an informal and international environment where colleagues with diverse backgrounds collaborate to achieve goals, and where people are given the opportunity and the confidence to fulfil their roles and develop as they see fit. Internally, we apply the same principles of our service: we are accessible, reliable, and innovative.

Terms of employment

This is a fixed-term contract through December 2028 due to project funding. Depending on the progress of the project, there may be an option to extend the contract for a fixed term beyond 2028.

Applying for a Certificate of Good Conduct is part of the employment procedure.