Lead Developer, Collections - Digital

About the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas.

The Met presents over 5,000 years of art from around the world for everyone to experience and enjoy. The Museum lives in two iconic sites in New York City—The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters. Since it was founded in 1870, The Met has always aspired to be more than a treasury of rare and beautiful objects. Every day, art comes alive in the Museum's galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing both new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures.

GENERAL STATEMENT OF RESPONSIBILITIES & DUTIES:

The Digital department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is seeking a Technical Lead for the Collection on its Application Development team. The Technical Lead is responsible for the Museum’s digital products and works collaboratively to design and build solutions that support The Museum’s mission.

The Technical Lead works as part of a product development team, partnering with product managers and designers, and working collaboratively with other developers, Quality Assurance, IT operations, and content producers. The lead will ensure that software solutions developed by the team meet requirements in an effective, efficient, scalable, and sustainable manner. The ideal candidate will successfully strike a balance between the needs of Product and Application Development teams to continuously improve the quality and stability of our digital offerings. The position reports to the Senior Manager of Application Development in the Digital department.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES & DUTIES:

Lead Responsibilities

• Directly responsible for the digital products that make up The Met’s collection online, including:
  • the collection object page.
  • the collection API.
  • the databases and ETL processes that support the collection online.
  • advanced collection search.
  • open access products such as the public collection API.
• Responsible for code repositories that support the team’s products.
• Work in collaboration with Product, other Tech Leads, and Senior Manager to define the technical roadmap.
• Ensure solutions are designed and built to achieve the goals of the team and the Museum, with the end goal of engaging and delighting our audiences.
• Work with the Technology department to provision and maintain servers and databases, and to sunset apps and related infrastructure when necessary.
• Work with the Technology department to maintain appropriate alert and notification systems.
• Work with DevOps to set up and maintain deployment and data pipelines.

Software Development

• Responsible for the vision, roadmap, delivery and success of internal and user-facing products.
• Work with a cross-functional product development team consisting of a product manager, front and back-end developers, UX designer, and QA staff.
• Write clean and well-structured code that is documented appropriately, tested effectively, and consistently error-free.
• Build core code libraries that are reusable across teams and initiatives.
• Work with other Tech Leads and developers to prevent unnecessary code duplication.
• Successfully manage technical debt, balancing feature development with maintaining usable code.

Communication and Problem Solving

• Provide clear and professional written and verbal communication.
• Work with Senior Manager to make decisions regarding technology selections, internal processes, system improvements, and technical solutions.
• Assist with critical support issues when required to find the most effective resolution. Plan and implement escalation processes to resolve issues as quickly as possible.
• Maintain a collaborative working relationship with the Technology department, partnering on systems architecture, risk mitigation, data protection, DevOps, and information security threat detection and prevention.
• Other related duties as assigned.

REQUIREMENTS & QUALIFICATIONS:

Fully vaccinated with an FDA or WHO authorized vaccine (or approved for an exemption as a reasonable accommodation due to a disability, sincerely held religious belief, or pregnancy, or because you are a victim of domestic violence, stalking, or sex offenses).

Experience and Skills:

• 5 or more years of professional experience in software and application development - particularly web applications.
• Experience with Agile methodologies and iterative software development practices.
• Expertise, experience with, or interest in learning the following technologies:
  • Open source languages and software, such as: Golang, GraphQL, IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework)
  • REST API development
  • Relational databases, including MS SQL
  • Real-time search engines, including Apache Solr
  • .Net Framework and ASP.NET MVC
  • Windows Network Infrastructure
  • Conversant with JavaScript and CSS
• Additional skills and experiences that are not required but considered a plus:
  • Sitecore CMS
  • Interest in the cultural sector and mission-based institutions.
  • Experience with additional technologies in use at The Met: Git, Jenkins, C#, VMWare, F5 Load Balancer, New Relic, Imperva WAF
  • Skilled at communication, able to deliver ideas clearly and concisely to both internal and external stakeholders across all levels of an organization.
  • Familiarity with data format standards (JSON-LD, HDF5, CSV)
  • Interest in mining open data sets and exploring connections with Met data (Wikidata, ULAN, TGN)
  • Interest in working with cloud data tools (Google BigQuery, Azure)

Knowledge and Education:

• Professional experience is key - applied knowledge gained from working.
• A Bachelor’s degree in a relevant area of study is not required but may be considered a plus.
• Up-to-date knowledge of software development practices, platforms and issues.
• Knowledge of Quality Assurance methods and practices.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art provides equal opportunity to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, age, mental or physical disability, pregnancy, alienage or citizenship status, marital status or domestic partner status, genetic information, genetic predisposition or carrier status, gender identity, HIV status, military status and any other category protected by law in all employment decisions, including but not limited to recruitment, hiring, compensation, training and apprenticeship, promotion, upgrading, demotion, downgrading, transfer, lay-off and termination, and all other terms and conditions of employment.