This engineering position for one year is open within the eScriptorium project team in AOROC at the École Pratique des Hautes Études – Université PSL. AOROC is a laboratory across the École Normale Supérieur (ENS), the EPHE and the French national centre for scientific research (CNRS). It comprises about 200 members specializing in archaeology, philology and digital humanities (processing historical and literary sources through computing). The work is in close collaboration with the ALMAnaCH project team at Inria Paris. ALMAnaCH is a research team of about fifty members, including 7 permanent members, specializing in natural language processing (NLP) and digital humanities.
Context
The position is part of the French project BIBLISSIMA+ (https://projet.biblissima.fr), and the ERC Synergy MIDRASH (https://www.midrash.eu). The eScriptorium project itself involves North American and European teams and aims to provide a free, open-source web application for automatic handwriting recognition, particularly for historical and so-called rare or under-resourced writing (https://ephenum.hypotheses.org/1412; https://gitlab.com/scripta/escriptorium/).
This work is in line with AOROC/EPHE–PSL and Inria’s expertise in processing humanities sources through digital means (digital humanities), particularly in the recognition of handwritten or printed text, with efforts involving the production of research software or reference datasets (https://htr-united.github.io/).
The person taking this position will therefore be in constant contact not only with colleagues internally (Ph.D. students, engineers, researchers) but also at the national (Biblissima+, Inria, University of Tours, CNRS, etc.) and international level (primarily Europe and the United States). The engineer will participate in weekly video conferences about the eScriptorium tool (United States & France) and in other ad hoc meetings as required. Annual travel to Biblissima+ and MIDRASH meetings (France and Europe) should be considered. Presenting development results at national or international conferences is possible and advised.
The engineer will also collaborate witht the Service of Experimentation and developement (SED) engineers of the Inria whose mission is to support, animate, and coordinate technological developments by providing expertise and advice to the research work of the Inria Paris center.
Remuneration
Based on qualifications and experience, in accordance with the French Public Service pay scales, up to € 4036 gross per month.
Missions
- Main mission (about 90% of the time): supporting the main developer of eScriptorium (open-source), particularly through tasks including code reviews, development, and deployment.
- Collective missions: participation in the life of the team and projects, including for conferences or international meetings abroad.
Engineering
- Supporting development of eScriptorium, particularly but not exclusively backend (using Python [Django], PostgreSQL, Docker Compose): for the code see eScriptorium on GitLab–
- Conducting code reviews from the senior developer and potentially from other contributors.
- Supporting the enhancement of infrastructure features: For example, helping to develop an export API to connect with other software, particularly through modules like oAuth; adding crash detection on instances.
- Improving application maintainability by enhancing continuous integration control
- Development of unit and integration tests.
- Integrating minor changes in the UI that reflect options added in the backend (new form fields involving HTML or JS, using the existing framework).
- Enhancing the HTR-United ecosystem (a full JavaScript catalog).
Coordination
- Carrying out code reviews in collaboration with local and international partners.
Collaborations and System Management
- Contributing to deployement of updates of a live instance (for more details see here)
- Participating in the life of the team and the Biblissima+ and MIDRASH projects.
Job Status & Work Location
Fixed-term contact for one year, full-time, to start as soon as possible.
Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers, France and remote working.
Requirements
Education level : Bac + 5/Master Degree ou equivalent
Experience : 3 to 5 years
Technical Skills and Required Level :
- Web programming expertise
- Desired skills in test development and continuous integration
- Strong knowledge in software development:
- Proficiency in Python and Django
- Expertise in debugging
- Knowledge of software architecture and programming paradigms, software engineering, best practices, and software development tools (version control, documentation, compiling, continuous integration and deployement, distribution, etc., particularly with Docker and Ansible among others).
- Front-end skills (VueJS/ JavaScript/ HTML/ CSS) are a plus.
Languages:
- Proficiency in English (knowledge of additional languages is a plus, particularly French)
Additional Appreciated Skills or Interests:
- Interest in managing long asynchronous tasks
- Interest in machine learning technologies
- Potential interest in the humanities (history, literature, etc.)
How to apply and Selection Process
Please send a letter of motivation and CV including a list of projects already completed (e.g. GitHub link) to peter.stokes@ephe.psl.eu and athina.boleti@ephe.psl.eu
We will begin evaluating candidates as soon as we receive submissions and will continue until the post is filled.