The work
The research data specialist role in the DCC is one that is designed to allow people with a wide range of backgrounds, skills and pre-existing knowledge to engage in all of the DCC's areas of activity, all of which related to one or more of open science, FAIR data, research data management and reuse, and the curation of digital materials in general. The activities include:
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international projects such as FAIR's FAIR, EOSCPilot and FAIR4Health;
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consultancy for research-performing organisations, policy-makers and others;
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the development and delivery of training;
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events such as IDCC, RDMF and the RDA Plenaries;
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the delivery of services such as DMPonline.
In the first instance, you'll be spending about 60% of your time on the FAIR's FAIR project, a H2020-funded consortium in which the DCC is playing a major role and is engaged in activity in every work package. How the rest of your time is spent in our other areas of work will depend in part on your knowledge and areas of interest, and in part on what work we have in the pipeline. Consultancy and training in particular present very varied demands depending on the client we're dealing with and the particular requirements they have. What we can guarantee is that the work is varied as are the people you'll deal with. There's lots of scope to develop your knowledge and skills working with us.
About you
The formal job specification, like many do, lists a big range of essential and desirable skills. It is a product of a formal process of characterising roles that doesn't always produce a clear description that potentially good candidates can identify with. I'll try instead to describe more informally what really matters to us.
Your previous experience could come from a wide variety of settings. It might have been in research, or supporting research, or working in some other environment where creating, reusing and/or understanding data is important. It might be in the public or private sector, in an internally-facing role or an externally-facing one. Your qualifications and experience could be in the sciences, arts, humanities, engineering, medicine or any other relevant area. You will need to have experience of data management and reuse in some setting, and to have some understanding of the broader principles of open research and the FAIR data principles. You are unlikely to be an expert in everything we do - none of us are. But you will be keen to develop and broaden your expertise while working with us and be able to demonstrate the aptitude to do so. You won't lack opportunities to do this whilst working with us.
You will need to be flexible, as the balance of our work changes from year to year. This is not a role for someone with a narrow research interest who wants to pursue that to the exclusion of all else.
Finally, although you'll sometimes have to work independently, you need to be collaborative. That applies to work within the DCC team and with the many organisations and individuals we work with around the world. Should you be selected for interview, we'll almost certainly be asking you for examples of this and about your experiences, positive and negative.
The context
The DCC is a consortium with staff currently based at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Your employer will be the University of Glasgow but for most practical purposes we operate as a single team across the two organisations. Almost all our work is collaborative, with partners around the world, and we have a diverse team that reflects that international outlook. Ideally you will already have experience of working in this way, but that isn't essential. What is essential is that you can demonstrate enthusiasm for, and understanding of, what such collaborative working implies. Once the restrictions required by the COVID-19 pandemic ease you can expect the role to require a significant element of international travel. Even without the travel, the international nature of the work means you'll need to be able to work flexibly to accomodate meetings and events taking place in time zones very different from the UK's, or your own home time zone.
Like many people, we've all been working remotely for nearly a year now and we don't expect that to change in the immediate future. Thus we won't be expecting the successful candidate to relocate to Glasgow in the first instance and we welcome applications wherever you hail from.