Professional Fellow, Arches Project

Job Summary

The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) seeks applicants for a Professional Fellowship for the Arches Project, which supports the open-source Arches Heritage Data Management Platform. Arches integrates a robust suite of modern and innovative software tools, including semantic, geospatial, and web technologies, for a broad range of data management needs of the international cultural heritage community. The Professional Fellow will be an integral part of the Arches Project team, engaging with a diverse and interdisciplinary community of heritage organizations, funders, software developers and service providers, and individual heritage professionals such as planners, archaeologists, architects, conservators, researchers, scientists, and educators. 

The GCI Professional Fellowship program is designed to provide unique formative experiences to professionals working for the advancement of heritage conservation practice at an early phase of their careers. The Professional Fellow, who has no more than five years of experience beyond academic training, will join team members on an established project and gain additional research and work experience under the guidance of more experienced senior staff members.  This fellowship is full-time (in-person at Getty) for a period of three years, from 2024 to 2027, after which the fellow will use broadened professional experience for career advancement and to pursue additional opportunities in the field.

Major Job Responsibilities

The Arches Project is expanding its global open-source community and continuing software development and enhancements. The GCI Professional Fellow (Arches Project) will have the opportunity work on a range of activities, which, depending on skills and experience, may include: 

• Becoming familiar with and promoting the capabilities of the Arches platform.
• Creating informational content, including presentations, webinars, forum/blog writing, social media copy, publications, and potentially technical documentation.
• Liaising with and helping support the Arches open-source global community. This may include participating in meetings, conferences, webinar presentations, and helping moderate the Arches online forum.
• Supporting governance-related activities of the Arches Project.
• Supporting Arches regional and topical user and working groups.

The Professional Fellow will disseminate Arches-related work to the heritage conservation community through presentations, webinars, or publications. Professional development will be encouraged and supported through participation in professional meetings, conferences, workshops, training courses, and interaction with Getty staff and/or external professional mentors.

Qualifications

Applicants should have a graduate degree in information sciences, information technologies, science, cultural heritage or related discipline, and 3–5 years of work experience in related fields.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Experience with data management, science data.
• Familiarity or working knowledge with open-source software, Arches, and/or any of the software components of the Arches Platform: PostgreSQL or similar relational databases, Django Python framework, and general web development tools.
• Strong general information technology skill set with the ability to learn new software approaches and methods quickly.
• Strong verbal and written English communication skills and ability to communicate complex and technical information to a variety of audiences.
• Demonstrable aptitude for working across disciplines.
• An understanding of cultural heritage preferred.