Join Us!
In this position, you will contribute to groundbreaking research on the digital society using state-of-the-art analytical tools. You will develop and integrate analytical and annotation tools for multimodal and transmedial data, encompassing text, audio, and visual data, from traditional media such as television and film to contemporary web content. This expansion includes robust annotation capabilities and access to AI-driven tools for automatic enrichment and analysis. Specifically, this infrastructure will provide means to search, browse, and annotate audiovisual data sets, and provide access to tools and environments for automatic enrichment and analysis of textual, visual, and audiovisual data as well as the use of AI applications. These developments will be fully integrated in the broader SSH research infrastructure.
What are you going to do
You will:
- Design and implement the Analytical Toolbox (in close collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders within the SSH field)
- Integrate, support, and expand existing data analysis and classification tools within the SSH national infrastructure, including the interoperability standards between these tools and the Analytical Toolbox
- Work with SSH researchers to develop new methods, processes and infrastructure solutions for multimodal, transmedial content analysis
- Ensure compatibility of the Analytical Toolbox within the broader ODISSEI and CLARIAH ecosystem, including the Netherlands Media Corpus and an integrated Knowledge Graph
What do you have to offer
- You are independent, responsible and motivated, with the ability to work flexibly as part of a team.
- You hold a university degree in computer science, data engineering, information systems, computational social science or a closely related technical field; a PhD is an asset but not required.
- You have at least 2 years of experience in technical roles within research infrastructures, data-intensive organizations, HPC environments or large-scale digital platforms. This includes demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-institutional technical programs. Experience with secure data access, linked data, or trusted research environments is a plus.
- You have advanced skills and demonstrable experience with multimodal and transmedial content analysis, and with the relevant processing and analytical pipelines.
- You have experience in developing interoperable systems, APIs, metadata workflows, or integration layers across heterogeneous platforms. Ideally you would have familiarity with deploying or supporting AI and machine-learning workflows, including large models, large network analytics, and multimodal data processing
- You have advanced programming skills for the following activities (or, in case of knowledge gaps, a clear willingness to develop yourself in these areas):
- Web development, such as familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and/or TypeScript; Experience with frameworks such as React or Vue.js is desirable. Knowledge of a popular web framework is a plus.
- DevOps skills, including deploying applications, using automation tools, and working with command-line tools, and experience with Git
- Data wrangling, linkage and analysis in Python, with a willingness to learn a new language if the project demands it.
- Experience coordinating and/or interfacing with technical teams, external partners, developers and researchers in an academic or research context.
- You are well organized, adaptable and willing to apply yourself to a wide range of new skills.
- You have knowledge of and experience in the academic field and/or research infrastructures in the social sciences.
- You are well organized and have attention to detail. You can communicate well and have professional oral and written command of English (C1-level CEFR or equivalent).
- Dutch proficiency is not required but is a plus.
What else do we offer you
The planned starting date for this project is 1 June 2026 (to be negotiated). The position concerns temporary employment of 30,4 hours for a maximum term of 2 years including a probation period of two months, with an option for renewal for two extra years depending on the project needs.
You will have the opportunity to attend training courses and both national and international events and become part of the ODISSEI network.
You will work here
This position is embedded within the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) and at the FMG Research Lab at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam. ASCoR is the research institute for Communication Science, structured around four program groups: Persuasive Communication, Communication, Organizations and Society, Political Communication & Journalism, and Youth & Media Entertainment. For more information, see the ASCoR website. The FMG Research Lab supports all researchers in the Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences with research engineers and other support staff.
This position is supervised by prof. dr. Theo Araujo and by prof. Dr. Jessica Piotrowski, as part of the broader research project Macroscope. The Macroscope is a collaborative initiative by two major Dutch research infrastructures: ODISSEI, focused on social science and economic data, and CLARIAH, which houses cultural and linguistic archives. The Macroscope will allow researchers to securely link and analyse massive datasets spanning social, cultural, and digital domains across the entire Dutch population. The project unites 14 Dutch universities with leading institutes, including Statistics Netherlands (CBS), Centerdata, SURF, the Netherlands eScience Center, the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, DANS, the National Library (KB), the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (B&G), and the KNAW Humanities Cluster".
Are you passionate about computational methods and multimodal media data? Are you motivated in supporting and collaborating with a growing interdisciplinary network of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) researchers, and helping them analyse news, social media and other type of media data in text, audio and visual formats to answer crucial research questions about the digital society? Are you interested in building, supporting and advancing the Dutch national research infrastructure for SSH research?
Then this research engineer position is right for you.
Join Us!
In this position, you will contribute to groundbreaking research on the digital society using state-of-the-art analytical tools. You will develop and integrate analytical and annotation tools for multimodal and transmedial data, encompassing text, audio, and visual data, from traditional media such as television and film to contemporary web content. This expansion includes robust annotation capabilities and access to AI-driven tools for automatic enrichment and analysis. Specifically, this infrastructure will provide means to search, browse, and annotate audiovisual data sets, and provide access to tools and environments for automatic enrichment and analysis of textual, visual, and audiovisual data as well as the use of AI applications. These developments will be fully integrated in the broader SSH research infrastructure.
What are you going to do
You will:
- Design and implement the Analytical Toolbox (in close collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders within the SSH field)
- Integrate, support, and expand existing data analysis and classification tools within the SSH national infrastructure, including the interoperability standards between these tools and the Analytical Toolbox
- Work with SSH researchers to develop new methods, processes and infrastructure solutions for multimodal, transmedial content analysis
- Ensure compatibility of the Analytical Toolbox within the broader ODISSEI and CLARIAH ecosystem, including the Netherlands Media Corpus and an integrated Knowledge Graph
What do you have to offer
- You are independent, responsible and motivated, with the ability to work flexibly as part of a team.
- You hold a university degree in computer science, data engineering, information systems, computational social science or a closely related technical field; a PhD is an asset but not required.
- You have at least 2 years of experience in technical roles within research infrastructures, data-intensive organizations, HPC environments or large-scale digital platforms. This includes demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-institutional technical programs. Experience with secure data access, linked data, or trusted research environments is a plus.
- You have advanced skills and demonstrable experience with multimodal and transmedial content analysis, and with the relevant processing and analytical pipelines.
- You have experience in developing interoperable systems, APIs, metadata workflows, or integration layers across heterogeneous platforms. Ideally you would have familiarity with deploying or supporting AI and machine-learning workflows, including large models, large network analytics, and multimodal data processing
- You have advanced programming skills for the following activities (or, in case of knowledge gaps, a clear willingness to develop yourself in these areas):
- Web development, such as familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and/or TypeScript; Experience with frameworks such as React or Vue.js is desirable. Knowledge of a popular web framework is a plus.
- DevOps skills, including deploying applications, using automation tools, and working with command-line tools, and experience with Git
- Data wrangling, linkage and analysis in Python, with a willingness to learn a new language if the project demands it.
- Experience coordinating and/or interfacing with technical teams, external partners, developers and researchers in an academic or research context.
- You are well organized, adaptable and willing to apply yourself to a wide range of new skills.
- You have knowledge of and experience in the academic field and/or research infrastructures in the social sciences.
- You are well organized and have attention to detail. You can communicate well and have professional oral and written command of English (C1-level CEFR or equivalent).
- Dutch proficiency is not required but is a plus.
What else do we offer you
The planned starting date for this project is 1 June 2026 (to be negotiated). The position concerns temporary employment of 30,4 hours for a maximum term of 2 years including a probation period of two months, with an option for renewal for two extra years depending on the project needs.
You will have the opportunity to attend training courses and both national and international events and become part of the ODISSEI network.
You will work here
This position is embedded within the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) and at the FMG Research Lab at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam. ASCoR is the research institute for Communication Science, structured around four program groups: Persuasive Communication, Communication, Organizations and Society, Political Communication & Journalism, and Youth & Media Entertainment. For more information, see the ASCoR website. The FMG Research Lab supports all researchers in the Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences with research engineers and other support staff.
This position is supervised by prof. dr. Theo Araujo and by prof. Dr. Jessica Piotrowski, as part of the broader research project Macroscope. The Macroscope is a collaborative initiative by two major Dutch research infrastructures: ODISSEI, focused on social science and economic data, and CLARIAH, which houses cultural and linguistic archives. The Macroscope will allow researchers to securely link and analyse massive datasets spanning social, cultural, and digital domains across the entire Dutch population. The project unites 14 Dutch universities with leading institutes, including Statistics Netherlands (CBS), Centerdata, SURF, the Netherlands eScience Center, the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal, DANS, the National Library (KB), the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (B&G), and the KNAW Humanities Cluster".
If you recognize yourself in this profile and are interested in the role, we look forward to receiving your motivation letter and CV. You can apply via the red button until April 10.
Please submit your application as a single .pdf file, including:
- Curriculum vitae, with grade transcripts from your (research) master’s studies; and potentially your PhD diploma
- Letter of motivation: Outline your fit to this topic and how you meet the selection criteria. If any criteria are not yet fully met, explain how you plan to develop the necessary skills. Optionally, include contact details of two referees familiar with your work;
- Coding sample, such as a GitHub repository, accompanied by a short (max 1 page) description of the code/project, and an explanation as to how (parts of the code/project) may be relevant to what you would do in this position.
Interviews will take place on April 22 (or a later date determined by the committee). In case of equal qualifications, internal candidates will be given preference over external candidates.
For questions about the vacancy, you can contact: Theo Araujo (t.b.araujo@uva.nl).
No agencies please.
