Community Manager – Research Software Directory; .FTE

Community Manager – Research Software Directory (0.8–1.0 FTE)

Supported by the Open Science NL Infrastructure programme, which strengthens open science infrastructure in the Netherlands, we are offering a temporary position for a community manager for a maximum of four years, reflecting the temporary nature of the role and its funding. In this position you will support our activities with the RSD community. If you are passionate about open science, open source research software, enjoy connecting people and organizing events, and want to help show the impact of research software, this is the perfect opportunity for you!

The Netherlands eScience Center is the national centre for innovative software solutions in academic research. We aim to bridge the gap in knowledge and expertise between digital technologies on the one hand and scientific and scholarly inquiry on the other. We create the tools and digital methodologies that enable researchers across all disciplines to answer research questions, harnessing our unique blend of academic expertise and software development skills.

We attach great importance to software quality and sustainability, and academic recognition of research software. This led us to develop the Research Software Directory, an open-source online platform that highlights the impact of research software by aggregating information about the software itself, related research outputs, societal impact, and the people and organisations involved. The RSD has been adopted by a large number of research organizations nationally and internationally and currently contains information on hundreds of research software items, thousands of developers, and hundreds of thousands related research outputs.

The eScience Center stands for a research-focused, professional, collaborative, open and resourceful approach to everything we do, and we require that our staff can identify with these values. Our people have a diverse background in education, gender, nationality, and ethnicity. Together, we form an inclusive group with a common drive.

As the RSD Community Manager, you will play a key role in building, engaging, and strengthening the RSD community in the Netherlands and internationally. You will help connect users, stakeholders, project partners, and developers to ensure that the RSD continues to meet the needs of its growing community.

Your work will focus on the activities and deliverables defined in the Open Science Infrastructure projects related to the RSD. This includes developing community engagement activities, organising events and training sessions, gathering and translating user feedback, and contributing to the long-term sustainability and governance of the RSD.

You will:

• Build and maintain effective relationships between RSD project partners, stakeholders, users, developers, and colleagues across the eScience Center.
• Increase awareness of the value and impact of research software, reproducible research, and open science within the Netherlands and internationally.
• Strengthen the visibility, adoption, and engagement of the RSD among research organisations, research communities, and other open science infrastructures.
• Facilitate collaboration between the RSD community, project partners, and the national and international RSD development team.
• Gather and translate community feedback and user requirements into actionable insights and feature requests for the development team, and communicate new developments back to the user community.
• Organise community events and activities that foster collaboration, knowledge exchange, and engagement among RSD users and stakeholders.
• Work with the eScience Center’s Training Coordinators to develop RSD-related training materials and organise training activities.
• Contribute to the development of a community strategy, long-term sustainability plan, and governance model for the RSD.

You are an experienced community professional who enjoys working in an international, English-speaking environment and connecting people around open science. You are motivated to support research communities and foster collaboration around open…