Jobs

Would you like to help shape the future of open infrastructure that serves as the backbone of global scholarly communication? Join Crossref as the Program Technical Lead.

• Location: Remote and global, to partially overlap with working hours in European time zones.
• Type: Full-time
• Remuneration: 120k USD or local equivalent. Note this is a general guide (as there is no universal currency) and local currency analysis will take place before the final offer.
• Benefits: Check out our Employee Handbook for more details on paid time off, unlimited sick time, paid parental and medical leaves, and more.
• Reports to: Director of Technology, Dominika Tkaczyk
• Timeline: Advertise in August-September and offer in October-November.

About the role

Crossref operates an open infrastructure that connects thousands of scholarly publishers, millions of research articles, and research objects to serve an increasingly diverse set of communities within scholarly publishing, research, funding, and beyond. Our system acts as the backbone for preserving and sharing the scholarly record. We offer a wide array of services to ensure that scholarly research metadata is registered, linked, and distributed. When members register their content with us, we collect both bibliographic and non-bibliographic metadata. We process it so that connections can be made between publications, people, organizations, and other associated outputs. We preserve the metadata we receive as a critical part of the scholarly record. We also make it openly available across a range of interfaces and formats so that the community can use it and build tools with it.

Crossref doesn’t take a traditional product management approach, but develops its products and services through three cross-functional programs to guide and accelerate our work. We introduced this new approach to work towards better cross-team alignment, shared responsibility, improved communication and learning, and make more progress on the things members need. The three programs focus on Co-creation and Community Trends, Contributing to the Research Nexus, and Open and Sustainable Operations, with Metadata as a thread running through all three.

The Program Technical Lead will work within the Open and Sustainable Operations (OSO) program. This program manages and oversees all activities related to making our operations more open, transparent, and sustainable. This program focuses on supporting and strengthening the core functions our members rely on and enabling future growth. It includes metadata deposit and processing, most apps for e.g. managing titles, authentication, and architectural and infrastructural projects. This program also includes modernising our operations in general, which is not just technology but also finance and human resources, so projects like membership process automation, financial analyses, and business system integrations.

We are looking for a Program Technical Lead who would coordinate the technical work within the OSO program, partner with the OSO Program Lead to shape the future technical direction within the program, help prioritise and manage the work, share the ownership of the roadmap, and coordinate different technical functions (infrastructure, development, data science) to achieve the program goals.

As part of this role, you would lead a group of software developers and work with other programs to modernise our systems as we transition from a single, complex monolith to a network of interconnected modules. In this role, you should be comfortable working with legacy codebases while also designing new components.

Key responsibilities

• Guide the technical direction of the OSO program
• Ensure that architecture and implementation decisions within the program align with our long-term technical approach
• Partner with the OSO Program Lead to maintain the roadmap, set priorities, and plan future work
• Work with other programs to modernise our systems for the long term
• Coordinate between different technical functions (infrastructure, development, data science) in the projects undertaken within the program
• Help make sure a healthy balance between maintenance tasks, modernisation, and new features and services is maintained
• Identify and recruit for needed additional technical skills and expertise within the program
• Promote best practices and modern technical approaches within the team
• Oversee the work done with contractors, as needed
• Be a proactive member of the Technology team’s leadership; contribute to our broader strategy as a member of Crossref’s Senior Management Team (SMT) responsible for planning and priority setting across the organisation
• Build a shared understanding of the community needs and propagate that within the technology team
• Engage with the community as appropriate and represent Crossref in working groups, collaborative community initiatives, and at events both online and occasionally in person

About you

Essential skills and experience:

• Minimum 5 years of technical leadership experience, either in an official capacity or through senior technical roles
• Background in a technical role such as software developer, DevOps engineer, data engineer, or similar
• Proven ability to coordinate and lead technical projects, including planning, goal setting, and organising tasks to achieve outcomes
• Team management skills, such as communication, listening, conflict resolution, empathy, and coaching
• Understanding of systems thinking and software design principles
• Familiarity with Java and at least one additional programming language
• Familiarity with relational databases and REST APIs
• Comfortable overseeing maintenance and improving legacy codebases
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Ability to work independently while actively collaborating and consulting with others
• Good communication skills with the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences
• Confident in articulating your perspective and able to push back or say no when necessary

Nice-to-have:

• Background in scholarly communications and/or open infrastructure/open metadata
• Experience working in the non-profit sector or with community-led organisations
• Familiarity with cloud-native technologies and environments
• Familiarity with search engines
• Experience coordinating external collaborations and contractors
• Experience working within cross-functional teams
• Knowledge of authentication and authorisation systems
• Experience designing scalable systems

About Crossref & the team

We’re a nonprofit membership organisation that exists to make scholarly communications better. We rally the community; tag and share metadata; run an open infrastructure; play with technology; and make tools and services—all to help put research in context.

We envision a rich and reusable open network of relationships connecting research organisations, people, things, and actions; a scholarly record that the global community can build on forever, for the benefit of society. We are working towards this vision of a ‘Research Nexus’ by demonstrating the value of richer and connected open metadata, incentivising people to meet best practices, while making it easier to do so. “We” means 2 members from 160 countries, 170+ million records, and nearly 2 billion monthly metadata queries from thousands of tools across the research ecosystem. We want to be a sustainable source of complete, open, and global scholarly metadata and relationships.

Take a look at our strategic agenda to see the planned work that aims to achieve the vision. The sustainability area aims to make transparent all the processes and procedures we follow to run the operation long-term, including our financials and our ongoing commitment to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI). The governance area describes our board and its role in community oversight.

It also takes a strong team – because reliable infrastructure needs committed people who contribute to and realise the vision, and thrive doing it. We are a distributed group of 49 dedicated people who like to play quizzes, talk about celery (sometimes cucumber), measure coffee intake, and create 100s of custom slack emojis. We enthusiastically support the Oxford comma but waver between use of American or British English. Occasionally we do some work to improve knowledge sharing worldwide— which we take a bit more seriously than ourselves. We do this through fair policies and working practices, a balanced approach to resourcing, and accountability to each other.

We can offer the successful candidate a challenging and fun environment to work in. Together we are dedicated to our global mission and we are constantly adapting to ensure we get there. Take a look at our organisation chart, the latest Annual Meeting recordings, and our financial information here.

Thinking of applying?

We especially encourage applications from people with backgrounds historically under-represented in research and scholarly communications. You can be based anywhere in the world where we can employ staff, either directly or through an employer of record.

We will invite selected candidates to an initial call to discuss the role. Following that, shortlisted candidates will be invited to an interview. You will receive all questions in advance, and the interview will include some questions and/or exercises you’ll have a chance to prepare for. All interviews will be held remotely on Zoom.

Click here to apply!

We will accept applications until September 8th, 2025.

Anticipated salary for this role is approximately 120k USD-equivalent, paid in local currency. Crossref offers competitive compensation, benefits, flexible work arrangements, professional development opportunities, and a supportive work environment. Check out our Employee Handbook for more details on paid time off, unlimited sick time, paid parental and medical leaves, and more.

Equal opportunities commitment

Crossref is committed to a policy of non-discrimination and equal opportunity for all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, pregnancy or a condition related to pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, uniform service member status, or any other protected class under applicable law. Crossref will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities in accordance with applicable law.

Thanks for your interest in joining Crossref. We are excited to hear from you!