Full Stack Research Software Engineer - HuC Humanities Cluster

Full Stack Research Software Engineer

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.

If this strikes your interest then this job opening might be just the right fit for you, and we invite you to send us a message about our vacancy.

The Digital Infrastructure department at the KNAW Humanities Cluster in Amsterdam is looking for a Full Stack Research Software Engineer, 38 hours per week (0,8 - 1.0 FTE).

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.

About HuC
The KNAW Humanities Cluster stands for innovative and interdisciplinary research in the humanities and heritage sector. The KNAW Humanities Cluster is a collaboration of three KNAW institutes: the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, the International Institute of Social History (IISH) and the Meertens Institute. In these institutes, we conduct pioneering and excellent humanities research (history, ethnology, literature, linguistics) using innovative methods in which informatics plays an important role. he business office of the KNAW Humanities Cluster supports these three institutes, as well as the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) and the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), in their operational management. The KNAW Humanities Cluster has placed its operational management in a central business office and has a joint department for Digital Infrastructure, a Digital Humanities Lab and NL Lab.

Terms of employment
Depending on education and experience the minimum salary is 3.546 and the maximum salary is 5.538 gross per month for a full-time appointment (scale 10 cao Nederlandse Universiteiten/KNAW). This is exclusive of 8% vacation allowance, 8.3% year-end bonus, travel allowance, internet allowance, home working allowance and pension accrual with ABP.

The KNAW offers its staff an excellent package of secondary benefits. A package that meets the different needs of employees depending on their stage of life, lifestyle or career ambitions. For example, by working an extra two hours a week, it is possible to increase the number of days off from 29 to 41 days a year (with full-time employment).

For a complete overview of the terms of employment, please refer to the web page: werken bij de KNAW.

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

Diversity & Inclusion
The KNAW considers a working environment in which everyone feels welcome and appreciated of great importance. A working environment in which attention is paid to individual quality and where development opportunities are paramount. Together we strive for an inclusive culture in which we embrace differences. We would therefore like to invite candidates who want to contribute to this through their background and experience. In the event of equal suitability, preference will be given to the candidate who thus enhances diversity within the Academy.

We will not respond to any supplier enquiries based on this job advertisement.