• Design and implement data pipelines for collecting, processing, and serving cultural and social data from various sources including APIs, web scraping (particularly social media platforms) and institutional databases;
• Build and maintain backend APIs and services for data access, analysis, and visualization of textual, geographic, and multimedia data;
• Work with geospatial data and build services for geographic analysis and visualization of historical and contemporary datasets;
• Collaborate with frontend developers to integrate data systems with user-facing research applications;
• Develop infrastructure for social media data collection and analysis, with attention to ethical and legal compliance;
• Develop and fine-tune classification models for cultural heritage data, including multimodal approaches for text, image, and metadata classification.

You have advanced knowledge of designing and developing data infrastructure as well as building data pipelines. You are capable of setting up back-end infrastructures such as storage space, databases and analytic workflows. The engineer we are looking for will develop advanced facilities and be able to deal with cultural sources in various modalities, e.g., textual, (audio-)visual and 3D; requiring familiarity with state-of-the-art developments in the field. The engineer should also be able to see beyond specific applications and overview a complete data pipeline.

Knowledge of social media platforms, experience in processing data through APIs and web scraping is also essential, including an understanding of the legal/ethical position of such work. You would look forward to working in interdisciplinary teams with other data engineers, data scientists and researchers and to further developing your expertise and skillset.

Your experience and profile:

• An MA or MSc in Data Science, Digital Humanities, or in another discipline with a relevant specialisation. The degree must have been obtained by the time the position starts; 
• Track record of experience of working with web, social media, historical, linguistic and cultural data;
• Experience with backend frameworks such as Django (or equivalent like Flask) and Node.js for building APIs and web services; 
• Proficiency in Python for data processing and pipeline development;
• Knowledge of database systems including PostgreSQL and search engines like Elasticsearch. Familiarity with Linked Open Data standards and semantic web technologies;
• A strong plus is experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) and deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow) for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) and training/deploying classification models on text, audio, or visual data is a strong plus;
• Excellent social and communication skills;
• Good command of English and Dutch (at NT2 level);
• Works accurately and independently with a problem-solving approach.

We offer a temporary full-time contract as Engineering and Application Manager 2 for a period of 9 months. Preferred starting date is 1 March 2026.

The gross monthly salary based on 38 hours per week ranges from € 4728 up to a maximum of € 6433. This is exclusive 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% end-of-year bonus. The starting salary will be based on qualifications, expertise and relevant experience, in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities.