Research Software Engineer – Social Sciences & Humanities

Netherlands eScience Center; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Travel and communication allowance

Holiday allowance (8%)

Year-end bonus (8.33%)

Personal development budget

Fitness plan

Bike plan

Flexible work from home

Job summary

The Netherlands eScience Center seeks a Research Software Engineer for the Social Sciences & Humanities team. You will join a multidisciplinary group, typically handling 2–3 projects, splitting time between our Amsterdam office and project locations across the Netherlands, with remote work options.

You contribute to research software, reproducibility, and open science, collaborating with researchers and technical experts to advance computational methods in humanities and related fields.

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent demonstrated in academic research and software development.
• Experience developing research software and open‑source frameworks for research purposes.
• Domain affinity in humanities (e.g., art, archaeology, history) with computational methods.

Responsibilities

• Work in a multidisciplinary team on 2–3 projects simultaneously.
• Contribute to software development, testing, and reproducibility in research projects.
• Engage with researchers and technical experts across disciplines and present results.
• Travel between Amsterdam office and university locations, with home‑working options.

Skills

Academic research

Research software development

NLP & AI methods

Image processing / computer vision

Multimodal data integration

Computational modelling

Education

PhD or equivalent

Job description

Research Software Engineer - Social Sciences & Humanities

The Netherlands eScience Center is growing and looking for enthusiastic Research Software Engineers (RSEs) to join our dynamic team and collaborate on exciting research projects. Join us in harnessing the power of technology to drive innovative research forward.

If you have the drive to continuously improve software & impact science, if you are creative and communicative, and enjoy tackling complex challenges, this is the job for you.

Who are we?

The Netherlands eScience Center is the national center 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 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.

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

Our Research Software Engineers are distributed into four different sections, Natural Sciences & Engineering, Social Sciences & Humanities, Life Sciences, and Environment & Sustainability, with opportunities to exchange knowledge between the different sections.

We always work at the crossroads of digital technologies and academic research with projects ranging from machine learning for climate science to GPU for high-energy physics or linked data for digital humanities.

What will you do?

You will be a part of a multidisciplinary team. You will typically work on 2 or 3 projects simultaneously. Projects vary in size from three-month consultancy projects to large multi-year collaborations. You will share your time between our office in Amsterdam, projects locations in various universities across the Netherlands and working from home.

A typical day includes a stand-up or work meeting discussing the status of the project software: some issues with the code that may need testing or require further development. You stay abreast of the latest technological and scientific developments in the project. You finish your contribution to a paper being written in your project. You attend an online presentation of a project you are interested in.

You’ll have the chance to participate in global conferences across a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines, expanding your professional network and engaging with experts from diverse fields.

RSEs are explicitly encouraged to explore technological and disciplinary fields outside of their main expertise and can develop their skills by following external training, leading projects, and attending community events.

Who are you?

You are motivated to tackle complex research challenges using digital approaches. You enjoy working at the intersection of research and technology, and take pride in enabling researchers to answer cutting‑edge questions through robust and innovative software solutions. You are curious, proactive, and collaborative, and you communicate effectively with both academic researchers and technical experts across diciplines.

You bring a strong sense of ownership to your work, while remaining flexible and open to learning new tools, domains, and methodologies. You value software quality, sustainability, and reproducibility, and are eager to contribute to an open and inclusive research environment.

Furthermore:

• You have strong credentials in academic research, such as a PhD or equivalent.
• You have demonstrated experience in academic research and in development of research software, methodologies, or open‑source frameworks for research purposes.
• To complement our Social Sciences and Humanities team, we are particularly looking for an RSE with domain affinity in the humanities (e.g. art, archaeology, history), and experience developing computational research methods for complex and heterogeneous data. Relevant expertise could include image processing and computer vision, NLP and AI‑enabled methods, multimodal data integration, or computational modelling.

What we can offer you:

• You will work at the forefront of international research, contributing to challenging computational problems across the social sciences & humanities.
• You will be part of a team of collaborative and ambitious people with a passion for academic research.
• You will be given extensive opportunity to further develop your professional and personal capacities.
• Salary scale 10 or 11, based on our Collective Labour Agreement (WVOI Cao-OI) depending on qualifications and expertise.
• Excellent secondary benefits: travel and communication allowance, holiday allowance (8%), 42 holidays on the basis of full‑time, a year‑end bonus (8,33%), personal development budget, fitness plan, bicycle plan, and flexible work from home options and facilities.

We are committed to fostering a diverse, equal and inclusive workplace, and we strongly encourage candidates from all backgrounds and communities to apply.

For more information about job opportunities at the eScience Center or about the hiring process, send an e‑mail to [e-mail].

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