Stanford Libraries is seeking a full-time Manager of AI Modeling & Inference to join Research Data Services. The Libraries values are rooted in a commitment of mutual respect, the idea that every member of the staff has something to contribute, and that learning is constant. We seek a team member who is ready to share their skills and perspectives.
About Stanford Libraries:
Stanford Libraries is a network of over 15 libraries with over 400 employees. We are committed to fueling the teaching, learning and research across Stanford by acquiring, stewarding, and making available a robust collection, currently in excess of 12 million items. Everyone in the organization plays a vital role in fulfilling that objective. Our dedication to discoverability and information management also has us engaged in dynamic global partnerships. We are constantly building and strengthening our organization, and we recognize striving for excellence is a marathon and not a sprint. We are constantly trying to strike the right pace, and admit there are times when we find ourselves at a fast jog. While we hope to always find candidates who fit within our organization, what we truly seek is someone who will add to our culture, our profession as well as the greater academic arena. We are invested in the success of our teams and the individuals who represent Stanford Libraries.
About the Position:
Stanford University Libraries’ Research Data Services is seeking an experienced, technically-adept, forward-thinking library professional to both lead and directly contribute programming effort to our new AI Modeling & Inference group. This role manages two Digital Scholarship Research Developers, leading a group with significant accomplishments in digital humanities projects. We are looking for an individual who can both design and implement research software, as well as manage a team of experienced colleagues.
Vision
We seek a professional who can foresee the impact of AI on academic research practices — and develop software and services to maximize the positivity of these effects. At the same time, this role must remain clear-eyed about limitations and problems of AI, and offer responsible guidance to colleagues and patrons alike. Balancing these two perspectives will be key to the leadership role we expect the Manager to play.
Mission
Digital research methods rooted in artificial intelligence have increasing visibility across academic disciplines. While large language models have captured the popular imagination, a host of architectures, techniques and approaches are now available to researchers, spanning from text to audio to image. As a core unit supporting research practice on campus, Research Data Services is building on its experience in domains such as pose detection, text analysis, and handwriting recognition with an aim of extending services in new directions across all disciplines. The Manager position will play a key role in gathering input, architecting, and implementing these new service offerings.
Collaboration
This role is a member of the management team in Research Data Services, a patron-facing group at Stanford University Libraries supporting geospatial research data, research data curation, data infrastructure, and academic data support. Due to the relevance of modeling & inference across many domains, we expect this position to play a crucial role in articulating AI research methods across other parts of RDS. Examples of this might include text recognition on historic maps, vector-space models for reconciling text in a curation context, or re-training Large Language Models on specific historic or literary corpora.
Beyond Research Data Services, this Manager role is also responsible for ensuring close collaboration on AI projects with other units inside Stanford University Libraries, including those responsible for collections, subject expertise, rare books, digital library systems, and technical services.
Core Duties*:
● Monitor technology trends and evaluate emerging technologies to recommend for adoption and implementation.
● Manage the development and rollout of Stanford University Libraries AI services and software for researchers.
● Propose, conceptualize, design, implement, and develop solutions for difficult and complex research software applications independently.
● Propose, conceptualize, design, implement, and develop solutions for difficult and complex applications independently.
● Oversee testing, debugging, change control, and documentation for major research software applications.
● Supervise professional staff, as necessary, working on all phases of research software application development projects.
● Engage in long-term strategic planning.
● Define complex application development administration and programming standards.
● Oversee the support, maintenance, operation, and upgrades of applications.
● Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical problems.
● Review the physical design of existing systems for optimizing performance.
● Lead projects, as necessary, for special systems and application development in areas of complex problems.
● Work with other technical professionals to develop standards and implement best practices.
* - Other duties may also be assigned
