Hiring in IT is really tough these days

A recent short piece in NetworkWorld cited a study performed by staffing firm Manpower Group notes that engineers and IT staff are among the hardest positions to fill.

This has certainly been out experience at ICPSR over the past six to eight months.  We posted a position in November and another in December and have yet to fill them.  Both are more senior positions, one a software developer and the other a systems architect.

My experience is that technology positions at ICPSR are some of the hardest to fill.  When ICPSR hires data managers at the entry level, there are usually many good candidates in the pool, including former temps and interns.  And when we fill more senior positions in those ranks, it is usually from within (e.g., a promotion from a mid-level data manager to senior-level, or into a supervisory or management positions).  But when the technology shop needs to fill a position, it is nearly impossible to hire from within.  ("Do you know Java?  Or how to manage a firewall?"  "No, but I have a background in Political Science and know how to use SAS.")

It could be worse, though.  Creating and filling director-level positions in our archives is probably the most difficult job.  In this case we're looking for someone who can manage a small team of professionals, manage a relationship with a government agency, and manage a portfolio of grants and contracts.  The ideal candidate is also successful in academia, but not so successful that they have no interest in pausing (or greatly shrinking) their research endeavors.  And it would also be great if they worked at ICPSR only part-time, keeping an appointment at some other university.  And be willing to be in the office in Ann Arbor a few days a week.  And....

Job posting: Cloud Sourcing Manager (UMich)

The University of Michigan has posted a cloud-oriented position.  This is good news.  (The entire position is included in-line at the end of this post; the U-M job system does not retain job descriptions once the posting date has expired.)  However, based on my reading of the job description, it has a couple of serious flaws.

One, this position is funded for a single year.  Why?  Is this because the cloud is a passing fad?  Or because this position will be able to achieve complete success in a single year?  Why wouldn't this position be funded indefinitely?


[ Edit - I chatted with the hiring manager - Bill Wrobleski @ ITS - and he confirmed that the job actually has funding for at least two years.  This is very, very good news, and shows a much bigger commitment.  I would also highly recommend Bill as a colleague. ]

Two, the job position itself sends mixed messages.  For example, from the Job Summary:

This solution oriented, flexible and proactive manager will be responsible for working with key process stakeholders such as Procurement Services, Office of General Counsel and IT governance groups to establish effective, secure and sustainable cloud sourcing processes for IT-related activities.

OK, so this is going to be a pretty slow-moving effort, working with some of the most careful, cautious organizations.  Work will be in baby steps.  Right?  However, look at the Responsibilities:

Accelerate the adoption of cloud solutions by removing barriers, streamlining processes and supporting the move to cloud solutions.

Creative problem solving and strong strategic thinking skills.  

So work with lots of stakeholders AND accelerate the adoption of cloud solutions? How? (And this second thing looks more like a Required Qualification than a Responsibility.)

So in the spirit of offering constructive criticism, here is my unsolicited, unofficial, revised Job Summary:

Information and Technology Service (ITS) is seeking an experienced Cloud Sourcing Manager to promote a "cloud first" culture at the University of Michigan. This person will be responsible for making it easier to purchase and use enterprise-class cloud services (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Salesforce.com) by collaborating with U-M Procurement Services, Office of General Counsel and IT governance groups. This person will also be responsible for lowering barriers to using consumer-class cloud services (e.g., Dropbox, Lastpass) by conducting regular demonstrations and informational sessions (town halls, brown bags) to bring awareness of cloud resources to the entire U-M community. 

NOTE: this position is funded indefinitely.

So now the person has the opportunity to accelerate cloud use (where it makes sense) while s/he works through the bureaucracy of the U-M to make bigger, systemic changes.  I like this more already!

And now for my unsolicited, unofficial, revised Responsibilities.  First, I should note that I like all of these ones from the original posting:

• Maintain a broad understanding of cloud marketplace including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings. 
• Manage relationships with cloud vendors including establishing service level standards and reporting. 
• Participate on and/or lead project teams that are leveraging new cloud-based products. 
• With appropriate stakeholders, support contract negotiation with cloud providers. 
• Track the use of cloud services and identify trends and investment opportunities. 
• Work cooperatively with higher education consortiums [sic] to provide and leverage expertise and combined purchasing power.

Some in the original posting are OK too, but strike me as details of the position (i.e., you need to work with other teams in ITS; and you should make sure that the cloud stuff can work with our existing IT infrastructure). I would not include them any more than I would include responsibilities like attending meetings, reading email, and brushing teeth.

And here are the items I would add.  Mine are really specific:

• Negotiate an invoicing mechanism with Amazon Web Services (AWS) such that the U-M receives preferential rates based on aggregate campus usage, not individual department usage
• Using AWS Direct Connect establish a private, secure, low-cost network connection between the U-M campus and the AWS cloud
• Using AWS Virtual Private Cloud establish a private, secure, virtual data center in the AWS cloud for use by researchers and IT staff at the U-M
• Organize a campus-wide "Cloud Day" event at U-M similar to events focused on IT security and cyberinfrastructure, where speakers would present information about real-life use-cases using cloud capabilities to solve real problems
• At least once per month conduct an informational session for some department, institute or similar organization on campus, demonstrating a consumer-grade cloud product, noting its pros and cons, and how researchers and staff may use it safely

I should note that the AWS-related items would also help me out a lot.

And as promised, the original posting:

Cloud Sourcing Manager

How to Apply

A cover letter and resume are required; the cover letter must be PAGE 1 of your resume. The letter should:

(1) specifically outline the reasons for your interest in the position;
(2) outline your particular skills and experience that directly relate to this position; and
(3) include your current or ending salary.

Starting salary may vary depending on qualifications and experience of the selected candidate.

Job Summary

Information and Technology Service (ITS) is seeking an experienced Cloud Sourcing Manager to oversee cloud computing activities at the University of Michigan. This solution oriented, flexible and proactive manager will be responsible for working with key process stakeholders such as Procurement Services, Office of General Counsel and IT governance groups to establish effective, secure and sustainable cloud sourcing processes for IT-related activities.

NOTE: this position is funded for 1-year.

Responsibilities*

*Maintain a broad understanding of cloud marketplace including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings.
*Manage relationships with cloud vendors including establishing service level standards and reporting.
*Participate on and/or lead project teams that are leveraging new cloud-based products.
*With appropriate stakeholders, support contract negotiation with cloud providers.
*Serve as a single-point-of-contact for cloud-related issues for the campus community.
*Oversee the creation and maintenance of business processes that support the acquisition, operation and retirement of cloud services such as templates and instructional material.
*Work with Information and Infrastructure Assurance (IIA) to encourage and ensure the use of cloud services follow appropriate security, compliance and privacy standards.
*Accelerate the adoption of cloud solutions by removing barriers, streamlining processes and supporting the move to cloud solutions.
*Work with architecture and technical groups to establish technical integration support to allow cloud services to leverage standard directory, authentication and other interfaces.
*Track the use of cloud services and identify trends and investment opportunities.
*Work cooperatively with higher education consortiums to provide and leverage expertise and combined purchasing power.
*Demonstrate effective staff leadership and development.
*Creative problem solving and strong strategic thinking skills.

Required Qualifications*

*Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, business or related field or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
*Extensive experience with IaaS, PaaS and SaaS services and implementations.
*Broad knowledge of cloud computing marketplace.
*8 years of progressive IT managerial experience.
*Proven project management experience to meet customer expectations and mitigate risk.
*Superb verbal and written communication skills.
*Demonstrated supervisory experience to include: recruiting, mentoring, staff development, performance management, leadership, and/or team building.
*Ability to interact successfully with a wide range of people including faculty, executive leadership, technical staff and other campus groups.
*Strong organizational skills and the ability to successfully complete multiple tasks within established and changing deadlines.

Desired Qualifications*

*Masters Degree in business, technology or related field.
*Experience leading IT efforts in a higher education institution.
*Significant experience managing vendor relationships.
*Experience negotiating contracts and managing ongoing service levels.

Additional Information

The University of Michigan was featured as one of the "Great Colleges to Work For" in the 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education.

U-M EEO/AA Statement

The University of Michigan is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

We're still looking to add a senior person to the team!

The University of Michigan jobs site is notorious at discarding information about jobs, so I will include the posting below and the link here.  In brief we're looking for a senior systems person who can design and build delivery and preservation systems, and who (ideally) also has some experience with commercial cloud providers, such as Amazon.

Systems Architect Senior

Job Summary

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world's largest archive of digital social science data, is now accepting applications for a Systems Architect Senior. ICPSR is a unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. ICPSR's data are the foundation for thousands of research articles, reports, and books. Findings from these data are put to use by scholars, policy analysts, policy makers, the media, and the public. This position reports to the Assistant Director, Technology Operations, Computer and Network Services.

Responsibilities*

This position is responsible for the design, implementation, maintenance, and regular management of ICPSRs web systems development, staging, production, and disaster recovery operational environments. This consists of several distinct platforms, including local physical hardware and virtual systems hosted in Amazons Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2). The successful candidate will also work closely with the Assistant Director, Software Development, Computer and Network Services to define and implement functional requirements.

One, this position will select, install, and manage integrated development environment (IDE) software on developer workstations, and the underlying software repository. The incumbent systems are Eclipse and CVS, respectively.

Two, this position will select, install, manage, and maintain the testing, staging, and production platform environments used by ICPSR to deploy and test new web applications. The incumbent web application server is Apache Tomcat, sometimes run as a stand-alone web server and sometimes as a client to Apache Httpd. The incumbent server platform is a mix of local, physical servers and Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) instances running within Amazon Web Services (AWS). ICPSR has interest in exploring a more complete. cloud-based web application platform such as AWS Elastic BeanStalk.

Three, this position will manage the AWS-hosted replica of ICPSRs production web environment. This includes building and maintaining tools that synchronize software, static content, and database content between the production environment and the replica environment.

Four, the over-arching responsibility of this position is to maintain and improve ICPSRs capacity for delivering high-availability, high-performance web-based services, managing the tension between the desire to have well-defined, documented, predictable deployments and business processes and the desire to have fast moving, fluid, and flexible deployments and business processes.

Required Qualifications*

BS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or at least eight years of experience with designing and managing complex web application hosting environments
Two or more years of experience with J2EE application servers (such as Tomcat)
Two or more years of experience with virtualization products or services, such as Amazon Web Services
In-depth expertise with RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6
In-depth knowledge of networking principles and network support
In-depth knowledge of Web technologies (Apache, Tomcat)
Experience operating an RDBMS (Oracle, MySQL)
Experience working with monitoring tools, control software (CVS , Subversion, Perforce), and build tools (Make , Ant)
Strong understanding of web application architectures
Enthusiastic self-starter who works well with other team members
Excellent inter-personal skills with the ability to communicate clearly to peers, vendors, customers, and colleagues

Desired Qualifications*

MS in Computer Science or Computer Engineering
At least five years of experience with J2EE application servers (such as Tomcat)
Experience with Veritas products (Veritas Netbackup)
Storage experience (EMC)
Experience as an Infrastructure Engineer in a high availability environment
Expertise working with monitoring tools , version control software (CVS , Subversion, Perforce), and build tools (Make , Ant)

Underfill Statement

This position may be underfilled at a lower classification depending on the qualifications of the selected candidate.

U-M EEO/AA Statement

The University of Michigan is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

Job posting : Associate Director, ICPSR

I don't know how long this link will be live, but I've cut-and-pasted the original job posting below.    You can some work with me at ICPSR.  No tech experience required. :-)

Job Summary
		Position Summary The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) seeks to appoint an Associate Director to participate in the Consortium's leadership and to manage its collection development activities. The holder of this position will provide senior leadership in partnership with the Consortium's Director and will manage a portfolio of internally and externally-funded projects that acquire data and prepare them for future research. She or he will also work closely with the members of ICPSR's governing Council. This position involves the direct supervision of seven senior archivists and research scientists, with a total staff of over 50 and an annual budget of $7 million. The holder of this position will also develop new archival collections, interact with current and prospective sponsors, and write grant proposals and applications. Extensive oral and written communication is required, along with significant travel. The individual who holds this position will carry on a research program of his or her own, in collaboration with researchers in ICPSR or other units of the Institute for Social Research. The individual selected for this position will hold a research faculty appointment in ICPSR and the Institute for Social Research at the level of Research Associate Professor or Research Professor. The selected candidate's qualifications will determine the level. The selected individual will report to the Director of ICPSR. The position may be a joint appointment with other units within the Institute for Social Research (Center for Political Studies, Population Studies Center, Research Center for Group Dynamics, or Survey Research Center). A joint appointment with another unit of the University of Michigan is also possible. ICPSR offers a competitive total compensation package, with full access to University of Michigan benefits. Organizational Overview The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, established in 1962, maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction, and offers training in quantitative methods. To ensure that data resources are available to future generations of scholars, ICPSR acquires, processes, and preserves data. In addition, ICPSR provides user support. A unit within the Institute for Social Research  (ISR) at the University of Michigan, ICPSR is a membership-based organization, with more than 700 member colleges and universities around the world. A Council of leading scholars and data professionals guides and oversees its activities. More information can be found about ICPSR at www.icpsr.umich.edu. ICPSR's Collection Development Unit is one of five major activities, the others being Collection Delivery, Educational Activities, Computer and Network Services, and Administration. Collection Development has responsibility for identifying data resources, arranging for their acquisition, and processing them to ensure their future usability. Its budget is provided by ICPSR member dues and by grants and contracts from public and private sponsors. Collection Development is organized into archives, including the member-funded General Archive and eight specialized Topical Archives.  Each archive is headed by a senior archive director, who reports to the Associate Director. The Associate Director has general oversight of the management and budget of these archival units, as well as responsibility for establishing overall policies.
	Responsibilities*
		Lead ICPSR's Collection Development group by providing overall management to the unit and direct supervision to its archival project directors. This includes operational and budgetary oversight, and the establishment of operational procedures for the entire group. Consult with data producers and data users about the needs of the research community, and use that information to develop new archival collections and to write proposals for external funding to support those collections. Participate fully in ICPSR's senior management team, and when necessary substitute for the --Director in relations with the ICPSR Council, with other units at the University of Michigan, and the larger social science community. Conduct and publish research in the candidate's area of expertise.
	Required Qualifications*
		Minimum: Ph.D in relevant field of study. Seven years professional experience in the field, with a minimum of two years of experience in the management of externally-sponsored research activities. Demonstrated scholarly productivity, along with the proven ability to work both independently and collaboratively. Demonstrated expertise in the creation, management, and statistical analysis of social science research data. Knowledge of procedures for ensuring the privacy and protection of research subjects. Experience in writing grant proposals and applications, and in serving as a principal investigator. Experience in a supervisory role providing direction to staff. Excellent communication skills, both oral and written, in the English language.
	Desired Qualifications*
		Desired: Previous experience in teaching or training in the field of interest. Knowledge and experience archiving data and providing secondary analysis of those data. Applicants should submit a letter of application, a CV, three letters of reference, and relevant writing samples to: George Alter, Director, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research, P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106-1248. Screening of applications will begin shortly and continue until the position is filled.
	U-M EEO/AA Statement
		The University of Michigan is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

Job posting : Director of Curation Services

ICPSR is hiring.  You can find the job below here.

Director of Curation Services

Job Summary

Director of Curation Services

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) seeks to appoint a Director of Curation Services to maintain and develop a comprehensive approach to data management and digital preservation. The holder of this position will lead a team with responsibility for policy implementation and planning across the data lifecycle, including metadata standards, repository management, digital preservation, and compliance with standards (such as Trusted Repositories Audit & Certification). The selected individual will report directly to the Director of ICPSR and will be a member of the ICPSR senior leadership. He or she will represent the organization to ICPSR's extensive network of partners in both the social science and the digital archiving communities.

The individual selected for this position will hold a research faculty appointment in ICPSR and the Institute of Social Research. The position may be in the Archivist (Assistant, Associate or Full), Research Scientist (Associate or Full) or Research Professor (Associate or Full) tracks, depending upon qualifications. Joint appointment with other University of Michigan units is possible.

Organizational Overview
The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, established in 1962, maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction, and offers training in quantitative methods. To ensure that data resources are available to future generations of scholars, ICPSR acquires, processes, and preserves data. In addition, ICPSR provides user support. A unit within the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan, ICPSR is a membership-based organization, with more than 700 member colleges and universities around the world. A Council of leading scholars and data professionals guides and oversees its activities. More information can be found about ICPSR at www.icpsr.umich.edu.

Responsibilities*

Maintain and develop ICPSR's comprehensive digital preservation policy framework

Plan collaboratively with others to oversee the continuous evaluation of the digital repository, including all policies, standards, and workflows

Identify the necessary descriptive, technical, structural, and preservation metadata for ICPSR's diverse digital content

Evaluate and maintain quality control of metadata operations

Research other metadata standards to determine their relevance for ICPSR

Participate in the Data Documentation Initiative Alliance and in development of the DDI standard

Advise on methods for handling new types of digital content

Manage ICPSR's institutional records in collaboration with others

Promote the role of the organization within the digital preservation and data archive communities through a program of presentations, papers, and articles at conferences and meetings, and in journals representing key domains

Participate in the development of standards and good practice for the digital archiving community at national and international levels

Participate in training on lifecycle data management

Prepare proposals and applications for external funding to support both research into digital archiving and practical activities designed to enhance ICPSR's repository

Conduct and publish in the candidate's area of expertise

Required Qualifications*

M.A. or Ph.D. in an area that relates to information systems, such as Library Science or Information Technology, but we welcome and will consider otherwise qualified candidates with credentials that support the requirements of the position. Five to eight years professional experience in the field, with a minimum of two years of experience in the management of digital archiving activities. Excellent communication skills, both oral and written, in the English language.

Desired Qualifications*

Demonstrated ability to analyze, assess, and find creative digital curation solutions in a complex and dynamic research-based environment. Experience with creating and applying metadata standards to describe digital collections. Familiarity with data used in social science research and protection of confidentiality in research on human subjects. Experience in a managerial role (including fiscal responsibility and supervision of staff) on multiple projects. Demonstrated scholarly productivity, along with the proven ability to work both independently and collaboratively in a diverse environment. Experience in writing grant proposals and applications, and in serving as a principal investigator.

Applicants should submit a letter of application, a CV, three letters of reference, and relevant writing samples to: George Alter, Director, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research, P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106-1248. Screening of applications will begin shortly and continue until the position is filled.

U-M EEO/AA Statement

The University of Michigan is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

Systems Architect Senior job posting @ ICPSR

We've posted another job opening on my team at ICPSR.  I'll include the text from the job description below, but the short-lived link to the U-M job site is http://umjobs.org/job_detail/65035/systems_architect_senior.

In brief we're looking for someone with deep experience building production operational environments for web applications who can apply those skills to the ICPSR environment.  We currently have a mix of stuff running on real hardware at ICPSR and virtual hardware in Amazon's EC2, and we have a mix of legacy Perl CGI code and newer Java-based web applications.  A mix of myself and Steve Burling (who retires at the end of January) have been the main architects of the environment, but it has grown so much over the past 5-10 years that it has become a full-time job.

Here are the details:

Systems Architect Senior

Job Summary

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world's largest archive of digital social science data, is now accepting applications for a Systems Architect Senior. ICPSR is a unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. ICPSR's data are the foundation for thousands of research articles, reports, and books. Findings from these data are put to use by scholars, policy analysts, policy makers, the media, and the public. This position reports to the Assistant Director, Technology Operations, Computer and Network Services.

Responsibilities*

Responsibilities
This position is responsible for the design, implementation, maintenance, and regular management of ICPSRs web systems development, staging, production, and disaster recovery operational environments. This consists of several distinct platforms, including local physical hardware and virtual systems hosted in Amazons Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2). The successful candidate will also work closely with the Assistant Director, Software Development, Computer and Network Services to define and implement functional requirements.

One, this position will select, install, and manage integrated development environment (IDE) software on developer workstations, and the underlying software repository. The incumbent systems are Eclipse and CVS, respectively.

Two, this position will select, install, manage, and maintain the testing, staging, and production platform environments used by ICPSR to deploy and test new web applications. The incumbent web application server is Apache Tomcat, sometimes run as a stand-alone web server and sometimes as a client to Apache Httpd. The incumbent server platform is a mix of local, physical servers and Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) instances running within Amazon Web Services (AWS). ICPSR has interest in exploring a more complete. cloud-based web application platform such as AWS Elastic BeanStalk.

Three, this position will manage the AWS-hosted replica of ICPSRs production web environment. This includes building and maintaining tools that synchronize software, static content, and database content between the production environment and the replica environment.

Four, the over-arching responsibility of this position is to maintain and improve ICPSRs capacity for delivering high-availability, high-performance web-based services, managing the tension between the desire to have well-defined, documented, predictable deployments and business processes and the desire to have fast moving, fluid, and flexible deployments and business processes.

Required Qualifications*

BS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or at least eight years of experience with designing and managing complex web application hosting environments
Two or more years of experience with J2EE application servers (such as Tomcat)
Two or more years of experience with virtualization products or services, such as Amazon Web Services
In-depth expertise with RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6
In-depth knowledge of networking principles and network support
In-depth knowledge of Web technologies (Apache, Tomcat)
Experience operating an RDBMS (Oracle, MySQL)
Experience working with monitoring tools, control software (CVS , Subversion, Perforce), and build tools (Make , Ant)
Strong understanding of web application architectures
Enthusiastic self-starter who works well with other team members
Excellent inter-personal skills with the ability to communicate clearly to peers, vendors, customers, and colleagues

Desired Qualifications*

MS in Computer Science or Computer Engineering
At least five years of experience with J2EE application servers (such as Tomcat)
Experience with Veritas products (Veritas Netbackup)
Storage experience (EMC)
Experience as an Infrastructure Engineer in a high availability environment
Expertise working with monitoring tools , version control software (CVS , Subversion, Perforce), and build tools (Make , Ant)

Underfill Statement

This position may be underfilled at a lower classification depending on the qualifications of the selected candidate.

U-M EEO/AA Statement

The University of Michigan is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

ICPSR is now hiring!

ICPSR has posted a job description for a software developer to work on a new grant we've received from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  We call it the "MET Extension" project, and the grant was just awarded in November.  It's a two-year grant.

The main deliverable of the grant is to extend the technology platform that we're building as part of another BMGF grant - the "MET" project (which is also a two-year grant and was awarded in August 2011).  Both projects are largely video-oriented, building systems to stream video content safely and securely to approved researchers.

The lead developer on the original MET project is a gent named Cole Whiteman.  Cole will be familiar to many in the local Ann Arbor tech community, and has also given presentations about ICPSR to groups in venues well beyond the borders of Washtenaw County.  The person in this position will work closely with Cole.

Careful readers will note that the position is "term limited" which means that we've made it very explicit that the funding  for this position stops at the end of 2013.  That said, we've been hiring developers steadily over the past seven years as we've added grants to our portfolio, and we haven't had to eliminate any of those positions yet.  Beyond all expectations due to the economy in Michigan, business is still booming at ICPSR.

Here is a link to the position on the U-M jobs site:  http://umjobs.org/job_detail/64682/software_developer_senior

And because that link will break once the job posting goes inactive, here is my "permalink" to the position:

Software Developer Senior

Job Summary

A unit of the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is an international membership organization, with over 500 institutions from around the world, providing access to empirical social science data for research and teaching. The atmosphere is relaxed and collegial with a work environment that fosters communication and networking, incorporates a diverse staff with varying skills and experiences and offers family-friendly flexibility with work hours.

The University of Michigan (U-M) is currently under contract to archive and disseminate (video and quantitative) data from the first phase of the Measuring Effective Teaching (MET) project, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That project collected quantitative data and classroom video from over 3,000 teacher volunteers during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years. Data from that project are being archived and distributed to the social and educational research community through the hosting of a MET Longitudinal Database at the University's Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, the world's largest social science data archive. ICPSR seeks a Software Developer Senior to assist with this project.

**Please note this is a terminal appointment, with an anticipated end date of 12/01/2013.**

Essential responsibilities of this position include: coordination of software development activities with other ICPSR development projects; estimation of task level details and associated delivery timeframes; source code control and version management; release management and coordination with ICPSR staff; documentation production and management; training materials production and management; and, software support and trouble-shooting. Finally, the person in this position will be expected to freshen, broaden, and deepen their professional and technical skills via regular participation in professional development activities such as training, seminars, and tutorials.

NOTE: Part of this job may require some work outside normal working hours to analyze and correct critical problems that arise in ICPSR's 24 hours per day operational environment.

Desired Qualifications*

--Bachelor Degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering, or the equivalent education and experience is required
--5 or more years of professional software development experience using Java / J2EE
--RDBMS vendor (Oracle, Microsoft, or MySQL) certification preferable
--Sun Java Developer certification preferable
--Extensive knowledge of XML, XSLT, JSON, REST, and SOAP is required
--5 or more years of professional business analyst experience requirement
--Linux systems usage; Windows XP or Vista usage, including common applications such as Word, Excel and Outlook

U-M EEO/AA Statement

The University of Michigan is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

ICPSR Technology Job Posting - Senior Software Developer

Job ID:	34780
Job Title:	Software Developer Senior
Job/Career Family:	Information Technology
Job Description and Responsibilities:	Market Title: Software Developer Senior Job/Career Family: Information Technology FLSA: Exempt Salary Range: $70,000 - $85,000 depending on qualifications and experience of selected candidate Hours/Week: 40 Hours Shift/Hours/Days: Regular Business The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), established in 1962, is an integral part of the international infrastructure of social science research. ICPSR's unique combination of data resources, user support, and training in quantitative methods make it a vital resource for fostering inquiry and furthering the social sciences. ICPSR maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction. A unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, ICPSR is a membership-based organization, with over 600 member colleges and universities around the world. A Council of leading scholars and data professionals guides and oversees the activities of ICPSR. ICPSR offers a work environment that is a combination of the best aspects of a small nonprofit or business, established within a university setting. ICPSR is small enough that each person can make a difference, yet large enough to offer a variety of career opportunities. We have a relaxed, collegial atmosphere that fosters communication and networking within and between departments. We are family-friendly, offering flexibility with work hours, and we have a diverse staff that enriches the workplace with their skills and experience. ICPSR offers a competitive total compensation package providing full access to the University of Michigan benefits. More information can be found about ICPSR at www.icpsr.umich.edu. The ICPSR computing environment consists of Windows desktop workstations and UNIX servers. The desktop workstations run typical business applications such as Microsoft Office, but also run statistical software such as SAS and SPSS. The UNIX servers are based on the Intel/Linux platform and include Oracle databases, web server software such as Apache, and a number of other major systems (e.g., tomcat, cocoon). Responsibilities: This position will be responsible for designing relational databases, developing ETL scripts, converting relational data to XML, writing XSLT scripts, configuring Solr/Lucene search indices and indexing jobs, specifying object-relational mapping (ORM) and caching strategies, and developing Java web applications. Additional activities will include coordination of software development activities with other ICPSR development projects; estimation of task level details and associated delivery timeframes; source code control and version management; release management and coordination with ICPSR staff; documentation production and management; training materials production and management; and, software support and trouble-shooting. Finally the person in this position will be expected to freshen, broaden, and deepen their professional and technical skills via regular participation in professional development activities such as training, seminars, and tutorials. NOTE: Part of this job may require some work outside normal working hours to analyze and correct critical problems that arise in ICPSR's 24 hours per day operational environment.
Job Requirements:	Qualifications: -Bachelor Degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering, or the equivalent education and experience is required -Masters Degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering is desired -5 or more years of professional software development experience using Java / J2EE -RDBMS vendor (Oracle, Microsoft, or MySQL) certification preferable -Sun Java Developer certification preferable -Extensive knowledge of XML and XSLT is required -Linux systems usage; Windows XP or Vista usage, including common applications such as Word, Excel and Outlook
Department Name:	ICPSR
Org Group:	INST SOC RESEARCH
Campus:	Ann Arbor
Minimum Salary:	0
Maximum Salary:	0
Salary Frequency:	Annual
PTO:
Job Type:	Regular
Full Time:	Yes
Date Posted:	Oct 09 2009
Employee Referral Bonus:
Position Level:
City:	Ann Arbor
State/Province:	Michigan
Country:	United States of America
Postal Code:	48106
Area Code:	734

ICPSR Job Posting in Technology - Cloud Computing Developer

We've posted the following position on the U-M employment site. (The site is just awful, but don't let that scare you off.)

We've listed it as a two year appointment to match the NIH Challenge Grant, but we've had a lot of success keeping staff employed quite happily and busily by generating more and more grant activity.

Job ID:	34671
Job Title:	Cloud Computing Developer
Job/Career Family:	Information Technology
Country:	United States of America
State:	Michigan
City:	Ann Arbor
Job Type:	Regular
Full Time:	Yes
Date Posted:	Oct 07 2009
Minimum Salary:	0
Maximum Salary:	0
Salary Frequency:	Annual
Job Description and Responsibilities:	Market Title: Systems Analyst Senior Working Title: Cloud Computing Developer FLSA: Exempt Salary Range: $70,000 - $80,000 depending on qualifications and experience of selected candidate Hours/Week: 40 Hours Shift/Hours/Days: Regular Business ** Please note this is a two year term limited appointment** The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), established in 1962, is an integral part of the international infrastructure of social science research. ICPSR's unique combination of data resources, user support, and training in quantitative methods make it a vital resource for fostering inquiry and furthering the social sciences. ICPSR maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction. A unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, ICPSR is a membership-based organization, with over 600 member colleges and universities around the world. A Council of leading scholars and data professionals guides and oversees the activities of ICPSR. ICPSR offers a work environment that is a combination of the best aspects of a small nonprofit or business, established within a university setting. ICPSR is small enough that each person can make a difference, yet large enough to offer a variety of career opportunities. We have a relaxed, collegial atmosphere that fosters communication and networking within and between departments. We are family-friendly, offering flexibility with work hours, and we have a diverse staff that enriches the workplace with their skills and experience. ICPSR offers a competitive total compensation package providing full access to the University of Michigan benefits. More information can be found about ICPSR at www.icpsr.umich.edu. The ICPSR computing environment consists of Windows desktop workstations and UNIX servers. The desktop workstations run typical business applications such as Microsoft Office, but also run statistical software such as SAS and SPSS. The UNIX servers are based on the Intel/Linux platform and include Oracle databases, World Wide Web server software such as Apache, and a number of other major systems (e.g., tomcat, cocoon). Responsibilities Build a prototype secure data computing environment using public utility computing (as provided by the Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud's EC2) at the Inter University Consortium for Social and Political Research (ICPSR) that will provision an analytic computing instance that conforms to the underlying security requirements for data distributed under restricted use agreements and meets the analytic needs of end users and their research teams. Test the performance, security and usability of both the provisioning infrastructure and the analytic computing interface. Standard methods of testing system performance and security will be used as well as independent security assessments through white hat hacking. This position reports to the Assistant Director, Computer & Network Services, ICPSR, but projects will be assigned and priorities designated by the Project Principal Investigator. Note: Part of this job may require some work outside normal working hours to analyze and correct critical problems that arise in ICPSR's 24 hours per day operational environment. Duties -Works with technical staff to design, implement, and support cloud based and/or virtualized computing platforms for both internal and external users. -Creates automated process requiring little manual input for the creation of virtualized computer instances, user accounts, and data access. -Analyzes, proposes and designs the implementation of security interfaces in systems, applications, and network software. -Participates in the evaluation of proposed systems, applications, and network software to determine security, data integrity, and usability implications. Assess risks to data security and identify countermeasures, plan and implement technologies. -Provides third-level technical support for desktop and network systems, both virtualized and non-virtualized.
Job Requirements:	-Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or equivalent combination of education and experience. -Experience with Cloud computing and provisioning (preferably with Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud). - 4+ years experience with collecting and documenting business requirements from users; then researching, designing, implementing, and supporting computing systems to meet those requirements. - 5+ years experience and expertise with installing, configuring, and programming Windows software in both virtualized and non-virtualized settings. -Experience and expertise in industry security training, such as SANS GIAC, or have work experience in security consulting or network security. -Experience with social science concepts, social science data, and analysis methods, and statistical applications (SAS, SPSS, etc) preferred. -Experience with Wise Package Studio or other MSI-packaging software preferred. -Ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical users and stakeholders. -Excellent customer service skills and customer-oriented focus. -Attentiveness to detail. -Excellent writing skills (writing samples will be required) -Ability to work independently while meeting deadlines, communicating issues, and providing detailed project status updates. -Ability to work within a team.