Vacancy for File Format Analyst at Preservica
Abingdon/Remote, UK or Boston/Remote, US
Do innovative technologies interest you? Could you advance the state of the art in Digital Preservation to help organizations across the globe retain access to their critical information for decades or longer? Would you fit right in with an elite team of world recognized Digital Preservation experts?
About the Company
Preservica is a fast-growing Series B scale-up that is changing the way organizations safeguard and protect long-term digital information. We are a recognized leader in active digital preservation technology. Our award-winning SaaS software is trusted by a rapidly growing user base of over 1,500 organizations, from major corporations like Bacardi, HSBC, Associated Press & Unilever to government bodies including Texas State Archives, Los Angeles County, Boston City Archives, Ivy League academic institutional libraries, and iconic cultural institutions like the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
In the past six months alone, Preservica has grown its user base by nearly 400%. In addition, Preservica is soon to launch a new solution that makes digital preservation easily accessible and usable by all Microsoft 365 customers. These all require us to provide expert advice on how to protect the diverse range of information trusted to our system to users who increasingly want a fully automated solution.
The Role
As the File Format Analyst you will define and continually improve best practice for Preservica and our customers so they can preserve digital information using the appropriate combination of file format identification, characterization, migration, and rendering strategies.
You will do this by analyzing the complexities and subtleties of how digital information is formatted across a wide range of types, including office suites, media, images, 3D, GIS, and various specialist formats to build an internal knowledge base covering file formats and the tools that manipulate them. This will be built by wide research of the subject, using a global community of contacts and practitioners to continually enrich the knowledge base.
Your information will be used to publish best practice business rules for each file format for use by Preservica and our customers. As such you will be in a critical role at the center of the value delivered by Preservica to its customers.
Key Responsibilities
1. Lead and extend our research in the field of File Format Preservation.
2. Work on all formats used by Preservica users, including office suites (Microsoft and others), video and audio, images, messages and conversations, databases, 3D GIS, and various specialists formats.
3. Extract information from authors of content creation software, digital preservation resources such as PRONOM, Wikidata and COPTR, active researchers and practitioners in the field, our partners in the Preservation Action Registries initiative, our customers and our own internal team of experts. Also review and if appropriate provide tools to follow recommendations from respected institutions such as NARA, LoC, THA, FADGI and many others.
4. Gather as much information as required about the various file formats supported and the complex factors that influence their successful preservation.
5. Document the many tools available to identify, characterize, validate, migrate and render these file formats in a way that delivers value to our users. This should include community open-source tools and commercial tools as applicable.
6. Build a shared company knowledge base that can be used by our internal teams and customers to understand the issues relating to file format preservation.
7. Build and publish rule sets to recommend which tools should be used for which users on which formats to preserve the information for the long term by understanding how information is consumed and what level of digital loss is tolerable.
8. Persuade the digital preservation community and our user base covering memory institutions, records management and other information lifecycle management groups that the recommendations are valid and useful.
9. Present our work at online and in-person meetings and conferences across the globe.
10. Guide the Product team to help them prioritize file format preservation features and articulate the roadmap.
11. Support Engineering in improving the digital preservation tools and techniques within the product or fixing problems with existing tools.
12. Assist Marketing to build our business case and demonstrate our expertise.
13. Help Customer Support answer queries and provide expert guidance on format issues.
Requirements and Previous Experience
1. Have a deep understanding of the state of the art in Digital Preservation.
2. Demonstrate an appreciation of the issues surrounding file format preservation and the factors that influence it.
3. Be personable and with good communication skills to pro-actively and confidently build a community of experts across many organizations.
4. Demonstrate discipline at creating useful and thorough knowledge sources and clear and useful recommendations.
5. Whilst this is not a software development role, being able to write simple software or scripts to evaluate possible approaches would be very useful.
6. Degree level education in an engineering/software/system related subject or equivalent through relevant training and/or experience.
Location and Reporting
As the File Format Analyst, you will be part of the Innovation Team reporting to the Chief Innovation Officer and will be working with other leaders in Digital Preservation theory and practice located in the UK. You can either be based in Abingdon UK or remotely in the UK or US.
What We Offer
As well as a competitive salary, performance bonus/commission, benefits package and share options, we also offer great future prospects in a fast-growing market sector. We are committed to maintaining high technical standards and ensuring our people have the access to the best learning and development. And most importantly is the chance to be recognized as a world authority in this emerging discipline.
How to Apply
Please send your CV with details of your current package and aspirations to our Recruitment team at – careers@preservica.com – stating the role in the subject line.
If you would like further information or to discuss the role in person, please contact Mark Compton at mark.compton@preservica.com or call +44 (0)1235 428946.
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