The Digital History Lab at the Department of History, University of Zurich, is looking to fill a 60% position for an IT Expert with a focus on Automatic Text Recognition (ATR). The position is limited to one year, with a high possibility of extension for at least one additional year. It is part of the pilot project ForATR (Forschungsinfrastruktur für Automatische Texterkennung). This is an onsite position. Remuneration is based on the guidelines of the Canton of Zurich. Start of employment 01.11.2025.
The pilot project ForATR aims to enable researchers in text-based humanities disciplines to use ATR methods more efficiently and effectively, tailored to the requirements of sustainable and interoperable data.
Your responsibilities
- Development of ATR consulting services for researchers at the University of Zurich (in collaboration with the project lead)
- Development of project-specific ATR workflows for historical text sources (in collaboration with the project lead)
- Further development of technical infrastructure based on research needs
- Coordination with technical infrastructures at UZH and on a national level
- Contribution to third-party funding applications
Project coordination and management
Your profile
- Completed university degree (Master's or equivalent) in Informatics, Digital Humanities, or a related field with a focus on software development
- Relevant programming experience in front and back end
- Experience in application and (further) development as well as project-specific adaptation of ATR research environments (e.g. Transkribus, OCR4all) and ATR software packages (e.g. Tesseract, TrOCR, Kraken)
- Knowledge and experience in the field of Machine Learning for text and layout recognition
- Interest in text and layout recognition for digitized documents and research data infrastructures
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively
- Very good knowledge of the German and English language
- Strong communication skills
Additional qualifications may include:
- A minor or secondary subject in a humanities discipline
- Proven skills and experience in Python
- Experience in technical documenting or publishing technical progress and results (on e.g. GitHub)
- Strong affinity for open-source documentation and publication workflows
- Proactive identification and communication of technical challenges
We offer:
- Insight into diverse research projects and participation in various use cases
Opportunity to collaboratively shape the development of new research services at UZH
Information on your application
Application Documents:
- Motivation letter
- CV
- Job references
- Diplomas
- Two reference letters
Application deadline: 31.07.2025.
Please send your electronic application in PDF format to Dr. Christine Grundig (christine.grundig@hist.uzh.ch).
If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Christine Grundig, Head of ForATR and Coordinator of the Digital History Lab at UZH (christine.grundig@hist.uzh.ch).
