Tech Lead, IT Consultant, IT Project Manager

School/Unit Harvard University Central Administration

Department Harvard University Information Technology

Job Function Information Technology

Location Cambridge

Job Type Full-time

Salary Grade 059

FLSA Status Exempt

Union 00 - Non Union, Exempt or Temporary

Term Appointment Yes

By working at Harvard University, you join a vibrant community that advances Harvard's world-changing mission in meaningful ways, inspires innovation and collaboration, and builds skills and expertise. We are dedicated to creating a diverse and welcoming environment where everyone can thrive.

Harvard University's Central Administration (CADM) is a 5,000+ employee organization that supports the university's overall excellence by understanding and serving the needs of its schools, students, faculty, staff, alumni, and surrounding communities. Through dynamic and collaborative partnerships, CADM provides high-quality and efficient services to the schools to help them achieve their goals.

Our Mission: huit.harvard.edu/about

We empower the Harvard community with essential and transformative technologies to advance education, knowledge, and discovery.

HUIT's core values are:

• Human-centered
• University-focused
• Innovation-driven
• Team-oriented

HUIT's IT Academy aims to enable each IT staff person to grow professionally and become a trusted partner to her or his team. The IT Academy is built on the belief that every IT staff member across the University (including technology employees at each school and campus) can grow in her or his area of expertise as well as building strong people and project management skills.

Learn more here: (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below)..

Harvard Library and Harvard University IT are advancing the Reimagining Discovery initiative to transform how researchers, students, and the global community discover and explore Harvard's distinctive collections. This work includes the development of Collections Explorer, an AI-enhanced discovery application, and supporting metadata infrastructure to improve access and discovery of collections through modern hybrid search and user-centered discovery experiences. The IT Project Technical Lead provides hands-on technical leadership for this project by leading architectural and design decisions, collaborating with team members in technical matters, and guiding implementation, integration, and production readiness for a system that combines modern web application development, metadata pipelines, applied AI techniques, and hybrid search technologies.

The IT Project Technical Lead establishes project specifications and technical direction, creates a framework of technical standards and procedures, oversees software quality and system development and modifications, guides team members with troubleshooting technical issues, analyzes existing operations to identify risks and redundancies, and conducts comprehensive assessments to develop solutions for Collections Explorer and related Reimagining Discovery initiatives.

• Architect and design technical solutions and ensure technical quality and standards. This includes making architectural decisions and guiding technical design.
• Maintain awareness of relevant AI and machine learning advancements, research papers, and tools to inform project direction. Lead technical decision making and make judgment calls on technical implementation details and choices as needed.
• Lead technical decisions related to search, retrieval, APIs, metadata processing, and AI/LLM enabled features, ensuring AI-enabled capabilities are designed and implemented with appropriate attention to evaluation, transparency, privacy, security, bias, hallucination risk, and responsible use.
• Estimate and plan work, ensuring they align with the project's overall goals. Breakdown high-level requirements into tasks and estimating time/effort required. Assist with project planning and scheduling.
• Develop and review code written by other engineers to ensure it meets quality standards and aligns with design/architecture as needed. Ensure the reliability and accuracy of the AI-driven discovery features through testing, evaluation, and monitoring.
• Troubleshooting and problem solving. Helping to debug and resolve technical issues/problems that arise during development.
• Set and reinforce coding standards and best practices. Ensure consistent coding style, patterns,…