Web Application Developer

University of Chicago • Chicago, IL

106d • $65,000 - $80,000

About The Position

The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC) at the University of Chicago seeks a Web Application Developer to lead the design, development, and maintenance of web-based tools and infrastructure supporting ISAC’s digital research initiatives. Based in the ISAC Data Research Center (DRC), this position is essential to implementing robust, sustainable, and user-focused web applications and data services for digital scholarship in archaeology, philology, and cultural heritage. The successful candidate will directly support high-profile initiatives including the Integrated Database, ISAC research datasets, Chicago Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation (C3HP), Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes (CAMEL), Diyala Project, and the modernization of ISAC’s digital presence, including its public-facing websites and data portals. This is a hands-on development role focused on building and maintaining applications, infrastructure, and data-driven research tools, including support for projects exploring AI-assisted scholarship and data enrichment.

Requirements

• Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.
• Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 2-5 years of work experience in a related job discipline.

Nice To Haves

• Demonstrated fluency in full-stack development, including modern frameworks, backend scripting, and database integration.
• Interest in long-term preservation, open-source tools, and reproducible research.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted indexing, classification, or entity recognition in cultural heritage datasets is a plus.
• Strong collaborative, analytical, organizational, and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain custom web applications and digital tools that support research workflows and public access to ISAC’s collections and datasets.
• Build user-friendly interfaces for data visualization, geospatial browsing, and interactive storytelling.
• Ensure responsive design, accessibility, and performance across platforms and devices.
• Maintain and improve existing codebases, ensuring scalability and documentation for sustained use.
• Provide technical expertise and hands-on support for ongoing and upcoming digital projects such as the Integrated Database, CAMEL Lab, CRANE, and Diyala Project.
• Collaborate with ISAC researchers to implement technical solutions for digital projects involving text, images, maps, structured data, and emerging AI-supported methods for analysis and discovery.
• Build reproducible, scalable workflows for data transformation, modeling, and long-term archiving.
• Support version-controlled collaborative infrastructure (e.g., GitHub).
• Manage ISAC’s research data services, including archaeological, spatial, and textual datasets, databases, and web platforms.
• Integrate project data with external repositories and linked open data sources (e.g., Pleiades, Getty Vocabularies).
• Maintain and extend ISAC’s web presence through dynamic data portals and CMS-driven content.
• Implement and maintain metadata standards across projects (e.g., Dublin Core, EAD, GeoJSON, MODS).
• Produce clear documentation, user guides, and training resources for researchers and project collaborators.
• Provide workshops and consultations to ISAC faculty, staff, and students.
• Participate in cross-campus and interdisciplinary digital scholarship communities.
• Ensure all research data is well-documented and archived in accordance with FAIR principles.
• Support and maintain existing applications.
• Work with web developers and respond to requests from users.
• Perform code testing on components and ensure that appropriate implementation standards are met.
• Evaluate design alternatives for development cost and solutions using various methods.
• Perform other related work as needed.

Benefits

• Health insurance
• Retirement plans
• Paid time off

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: Bachelor's degree
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees