|::| GraphiTech |::|

One Junior Scientist Position – REF: NATSDI

Fondazione Graphitech, Trento - Italy (www.graphitech.it) is looking for one young and motivated candidate willing to work on a forthcoming European project in the field of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The candidate will work on a EU project (see following description) to improve harmonisation of national GI datasets and to make them more accessible and exploitable. For this reason the candidate must speak fluent English and must be capable to confront new scientific challenges and have a problem-solving attitude. Good knowledge of written English is essential as the candidate will be asked to write technical reports. Good interpersonal and communication skills are considered essential as the candidate will work within a motivated and highly competent international context, in close contact with leading EU Universities, Research Centres and Industries. Frequent travel within Europe is expected.
The position foresees a very competitive salary depending on experience of the candidate.

The project

On 2007 a major milestone was set at the EU level in the GI domain by the entering in force of the INSPIRE (INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe) directive (2007/2/EC). The latter is having profound effects, in technological, operational and political terms as it defines a legal as well as technical framework with the precise intent to provide harmonised access to data of environmental interest across Europe. From the technical standpoint INSPIRE is leading to the definition of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI) based on a multi-level federated approach based on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Through the ESDI, institutions at different levels, from all member states, will expose standardised data of interest for the EU through harmonised geographical web services.
The goal of the project is to define a common multilingual and multicultural approach for a simpler, standard access to spatial data within one of the theme specified within the Annexes of INSPIRE. For this reason the project will develop a complete specific metadata profile with the creation of common geographical thesaurus to support and harmonize the metadata entry. A demonstration geoportal, supported by web services, will provide data accessibility for the different stakeholders.

The profile

The candidate holds a master degree (or five years equivalent) in Engineering or Computer Science and he/she has specific experience in the field of Geographic Information Systems with sound background in GIS-related basic principles. Knowledge of all phases of computer map preparation including digitization, data transmission, data reformatting, and map production is required. A strong software engineering background as well as strong programming experience (Java) is also considered essential.
The candidate will work at the general design of a large-scale web-GIS portal and the additional services. This includes the specification of the functionalities of the portal, the definition of the user interface, the specification of a multi-lingual service (metadata validator and multi-lingual search support).

Requirements

• Very good knowledge of the Object-Oriented paradigm and Java programming language.
• Experience in the development of servlets as well as JEE services (e.g. EJB).
• Sound knowledge in the field of web-services and SOA (Service Oriented Architectures) in the context of Spatial Data Infrastructures.
• Software engineering background (specific experience in designing of web-GIS services is a plus) and knowledge of UML.
• Familiarity with OGC protocol such as WMS, WFS, GML.
• Previous experience in the development or deployment of web-GIS services (client and server).
• Knowledge and experience in Metadata creation.
• Experience with GIS software (ESRI, InterGraph or Open Source etc.).
• Experience with GeoDB (PostGIS is a plus)

Meeting one or more of the following is considered a plus:

• Previous experience or knowledge of interoperability issues in the GIS domain.
• Experience in the definition of software requirements and technical specification for web-GIS infrastructures.
• Knowledge of semantic model of metadata (e.g. thesauri such as GEMET - General European Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus)
• Knowledge of the following ISO standard:

• ISO 19146 Cross Domain Vocabularies
• ISO 19132 Location-based service Reference models
• ISO 19104 terminology Geographic information

• Previous experience with GeoTools API, JBoss, Oracle Spatial.