Digital posts at the British Library

The BL Labs team provided support to the Living with Machines team at critical points in the project. If you’re inspired to contribute to the future of BL Labs, now’s your chance! LwM Co-Investigator Maja Maricevic is recruiting for the British Library Labs Technical Lead, and has shared some information about the post. (And this isn’t the only opportunity to join the British Library – the Digital Scholarship team is also recruiting for a Product Owner, a Research Software Engineer and a Senior Test Engineer for the Universal Viewer product team, deadline 03 January 2024.)

British Library Labs Technical Lead: From Ancient Manuscripts to Cutting Edge Tech

We are currently recruiting a British Library Labs Technical Lead, a unique role that will support the BL Labs’ mission to enable researchers, data scientists, artists and others to make radical new uses of the British Library’s digital content and data. 

This role will provide technical leadership, new creative solutions and expertise for BL Labs to enable digital research using advanced computational techniques, including AI and machine learning, with the Library’s digital collections and data, especially at scale. However, this role is also so much more. It would ideally suit a person that is interested in bridging the imaginative and the technical, someone ready to link the world of ancient manuscripts with the world of algorithms, the world of historic newspapers with the world of large language models. 

With the ability to think beyond the obvious, we are hoping to find someone who would be happy not being pigeonholed in a traditional tech role, but who wants to seek solutions on many different fronts. Your previous career might have included a combination of software or web developer (ideally comfortable with Azure and JavaScript), creative technologist, data engineer, or AI and machine learning engineer. And at times you would be just happy to engage with our digital researchers and artists on a new tech problem that does not yet even have a name and classification.

This role will also enable you to create your own interesting projects and challenges, and to collaborate and share with our internal and external networks with digital researchers.

You will be helping us to get our initial BL Labs website to the full launch and you will make sure that the BL Labs infrastructure develops in ways that will enable us to serve more users interested in the Library’s datasets. But you also might help create an artwork, such as this amazing exhibition by Michael Takeo Magruder, which sprung from the British Library Labs.

If you are up for the challenge, apply here by the 20^th December. Please respond to all the questions on the application form, as answers are used directly in shortlisting for interview.