Web Developer and User Interface Specialist, Academic Professional, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library
Posted September 4, 2014
Position Available: The expected start date is as soon as possible after the closing date. This is a 100%, twelve-month, academic professional position.
Responsibilities: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign seeks a collaborative and experienced professional to join the University Library’s Web Team. Working in the Library Information Technology unit under the direction of the Technical Architect for Web Content, the Web Developer and User Interface Specialist will develop and maintain data-driven and user-centered web pages and related internet applications. The Web Developer and User Interface Specialist will initially focus on the re-design of the general Library website but may also collaborate with other Library units and groups that maintain web pages; and will contribute to the Library’s evolving user experience (UX) program.
Duties and responsibilities:
- Collaborate with faculty and staff to design new interfaces, develop wireframes, mockups and prototypes for testing in an Agile development environment.
- Collaborate to transition final prototypes to production.
- Create and maintain documentation.
- Maintain web pages and related applications.
- Participate in UX studies, including comparative and iterative testing of interfaces, and incorporate findings into designs.
- May modify third party interfaces and create new ones to meet accessibility standards.
Environment: The University of Illinois Library at Urbana-Champaign is one of the preeminent research libraries in the world. With more than 13 million volumes and significant digital resources, it ranks second in size among academic research libraries in the United States and first among public university libraries in the world. As the intellectual heart of the campus, the Library is committed to maintaining the strongest possible collections and services and engaging in research and development activities in pursuit of the University’s mission of teaching, scholarship, and public service. The Library currently employs approximately 90 faculty and 300 academic professionals, staff, and graduate assistants. The Library consists of more than 30 departmental libraries located across campus, as well as an array of central public, technical, and administrative service units. The Library also encompasses a variety of virtual service points and “embedded librarian” programs.
The Library Web Team facilitates the development, deployment, and maintenance of web services and applications within the Library. The Web Team creates and modifies templates and elements for use by Library Faculty and Staff with various web management systems. Also, the Web Team trains, supports, and troubleshoots problems in the use of Library web content platforms, including the integration of third party code/resources into library managed web content (Flickr, Twitter, etc). Opportunities to investigate topics, techniques, skills, methods, and procedures of benefit to library projects and to develop professional skills may be available (5-10% of time, as determined with supervisor).
Qualifications: Required:
- Bachelor’s degree with a focus on interactive design, graphic design, web development, informatics, human-computer interaction, or related field.
- Familiarity with web coding best practices.
- Demonstrated fluency in best practices for web-based and mobile information architecture, responsive design, and other web design standards.
- Excellent communication skills, including the ability to accurately communicate ideas across varying perspectives.
- Solid understanding of visual design best practices, particularly for website design.
- Experience with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Successful experience working in a collaborative environment.
Preferred:
- Master’s degree in a relevant field.
- Experience generating prototypes for internal planning and user testing as part of an ongoing, agile development cycle.
- Practical experience creating interaction design deliverables and specification documents, such as wireframes, site maps, and user flow diagrams.
- Experience designing in the context of content management systems.
- Experience leading user testing and usability studies.
- Background in graphic design.
- Experience with model-view-controller single page application libraries (e.g. Backbone.js, Ember.js, Angular.js).
- Experience with jquery.
- Familiarity with best practices for accessibility.
Salary and Rank: Salary commensurate with credentials and experience.
Terms of Appointment: 100% time. Twelve-month appointment; 24 annual vacation days; 11 annual paid holidays; 12 annual sick-leave days (cumulative), plus an additional 13 sick-leave days (non-cumulative) available, if needed, each year; health insurance requiring a small co-payment is provided to employee (with the option to purchase coverage for spouse and dependents); required participation in State Universities Retirement System (SURS) (8% of annual salary is withheld and is refundable upon termination), with several options for participation in additional retirement plans; newly-hired employees are covered by the Medicare portion of Social Security and are subject to its deduction.
Campus and Community: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a comprehensive and major public land-grant university (Doctoral/Research University-Extensive) that is ranked among the best in the world. Chartered in 1867, it provides undergraduate and graduate education in more than 150 fields of study, conducts theoretical and applied research, and provides public service to the state and the nation. It employs 3,000 faculty members who serve 31,000 undergraduates and 12,000 graduate and professional students; approximately 25% of faculty receives campus-wide recognition each year for excellence in teaching. More information about the campus is available at www.illinois.edu.
The University is located in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana, which have a combined population of 100,000 and are situated about 140 miles south of Chicago, 120 miles west of Indianapolis, and 170 northeast of St. Louis. The University and its surrounding communities offer a cultural and recreational environment ideally suited to the work of a major research institution. For more information about the community, visit: http://illinois.edu/about/
To Apply: To ensure full consideration, please complete your candidate profile at https://jobs.illinois.edu and upload a letter of interest, resume, and contact information including email addresses for three professional references. Please provide a list of three to five samples of projects/development work along with a brief description (no more than 5 sentences) summarizing your individual contributions to the project. Please provide URLs for these projects or submit images with documentation. Applications not submitted through this website will not be considered. For questions, please call: 217-333-8169.
Deadline: In order to ensure full consideration we urge candidates to submit application materials on or before October 3, 2014.
Illinois is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer which includes statuses of protected veterans and qualified individuals with disabilities (www.diversity.illinois.edu/