Full Stack Research Software Engineer - HuC Humanities Cluster

Are you passionate about bringing history to life through technology? Are you exited about working with digital cultural heritage data? Our Team Text is looking for a versatile Full Stack Developer to help us unlock and enrich historical text collections from the humanities and social sciences. We don’t just build apps; we build generic, reusable research infrastructure for multimodal data and annotations that handles everything from manual transcriptions to automated Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) based on scan images.

The Digital Infrastructure department at the KNAW Humanities Cluster in Amsterdam is looking for a Full Stack Research Software Engineer.

Job description

We design and build open source software that allows our academic colleagues in the humanities and social sciences to address new research questions using innovative new technical methods. This means that as a Research Software Engineer you aren't just executing tickets—you are actively co-developing innovative technology, thinking about reusability, and ensuring our tools and services are robust enough for scientific research. Whether you’re extending or optimising a data pipeline, refining an API, or crafting an intuitive frontend, your work ensures that complex heritage data becomes and stays accessible to researchers and the world.

We are looking for a professional who thrives at the intersection of at least two of our core pillars: Frontend, Backend, and Data Engineering. With AI rapidly transforming how we process historical data, you’ll also have the opportunity to integrate smart automation into our workflows, helping us push the boundaries of what’s possible in digital humanities.

Required Skills & Expertise

We don’t expect you to be an expert in everything, but we do require proficiency in at least two of the following areas:

• Frontend: Expertise in React and TypeScript for building frontends that enable innovative research.
• Backend: Strong experience with Java, Kotlin, or Rust for building high-performance services and APIs.
• Data Engineering: Proficiency in Python, typically for text processing, enrichment pipelines, and handling large-scale datasets.

Technical Ecosystem:

• Infrastructure: Hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes (K8s).
• Search & Data: Knowledge of ElasticSearch and/or PostgreSQL.
• AI & Machine Learning: Experience with (or a strong desire to learn about) NLP frameworks, Large Language Models, and automated text enrichment.
• Development workflows: Experience with command line shells, Git and CI/CD practices.

The "RSE" Mindset:

• Affinity with Humanities: You find historical archives and social science data genuinely interesting.
• Sustainability: You write clean, documented, and modular open source code intended for long-term research use.
• Collaborative Innovation: You enjoy "sparring" with researchers to translate scientific needs into technical requirements.

Formally you will be part of the text team, in a department made up of a group of circa 30, internationally oriented, smart people. You will work together with humanities and social science researchers from the three Humanities Cluster institutes.

Over het HuC

Het KNAW Humanities Cluster is een samenwerkingsverband van drie instituten van de KNAW: het Huygens Instituut voor Nederlandse geschiedenis en cultuur, het Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis en het Meertens Instituut. Binnen deze instituten verrichten we baanbrekend en excellent geesteswetenschappelijk onderzoek (geschiedenis, etnologie, letterkunde, taalkunde) waarbij vernieuwende methoden en informatica een belangrijke rol spelen. Het KNAW Humanities Cluster beschikt over een gezamenlijke afdeling Digitale Infrastructuur, een Digital Humanities Lab en NLLab.

Arbeidsvoorwaarden

Het salaris bedraagt afhankelijk van opleiding en ervaring minimaal 3.546 en maximaal 5.538 bruto per maand bij een full time dienstverband (schaal 10 cao Nederlandse Universiteiten/KNAW). Dit is exclusief 8% vakantiegeld, 8,3% eindejaarsuitkering, reiskostenvergoeding, internet- en thuiswerkvergoeding en pensioenopbouw bij het ABP.

De KNAW biedt haar medewerkers een uitstekend pakket aan secundaire arbeidsvoorwaarden. Een pakket dat voorziet in de verschillende behoeften die medewerkers afhankelijk van hun levensfase, levenswijze of loopbaanambities hebben. Zo is het mogelijk om door wekelijks twee uur per week extra te werken het aantal vakantiedagen van 29 tot 41 dagen per jaar (bij fulltime dienstverband) uit te breiden.

Het aanvragen van een VOG kan onderdeel uitmaken van de indiensttredingsprocedure.