Job: JavaScript Developer | Zotero

Zotero is an open-source project that develops software and web services to help people collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share their research. Our software is recommended by most universities and used by millions of students, scholars, scientists, and researchers worldwide.

One of Zotero’s superpowers is its unrivaled ability to extract high-quality bibliographic metadata from across the web. Whether someone is browsing an academic journal, library catalog, database, newspaper, or blog, they can save details about what they’re viewing to their Zotero library with a single click, enabling them to keep track of their research and generate accurate citations.

We’re looking for a contract developer to help make sure Zotero continues to save the best data possible across the largest number of sites.

You’ll spend most of your time writing, improving, and reviewing Zotero “translators” — the bits of JavaScript code that make that saving possible. To do so, you’ll find yourself digging into webpages with the browser devtools, exploring site APIs, and deciphering chains of HTTP requests. Some sites will provide data in common metadata formats; on others, you’ll need to come up with creative ways to extract data that’s designed to be obscured.

When you’re not building translators yourself, you’ll work with other Zotero developers to improve the tools that help people build, debug, test, and submit translators, making it as easy as possible for Zotero users to contribute translators for sites they use.

As a core Zotero developer, you’ll also have the ability to work across the ecosystem on other projects and help shape Zotero’s future.

Throughout it all, you’ll participate in a vibrant global open-source community with amazing community developers and passionate users. Since Zotero translators are used beyond the Zotero ecosystem, your work will benefit other communities as well, such as Wikipedia, where editors rely on Zotero translators to generate citations in articles.

We’re an international, remote-only team. We meet up occasionally around the world (falafel is often involved), but you’ll primarily be working remotely, communicating with the rest of the Zotero team via chat rooms and GitHub and with Zotero users via our active forums. We have a collaborative but often-asynchronous workflow, and you’ll be fully in control of your own schedule.

What We’re Looking For

• Extensive experience with JavaScript and browser APIs
• Deep understanding of how webpages work — HTTP requests, the DOM, client-side rendering, cookies
• Comfort using the browser devtools to explore and interact with webpages
• Experience working with web APIs
• Willingness to engage directly with users in public forums to troubleshoot problems and with outside developers to review code submissions

Bonus Points

• Experience with web scraping and/or data extraction
• Familiarity with metadata formats (BibTeX, JSON-LD, RDF)
• A love of free and open-source software

This is an open-ended contract role that can scale up and down in hours based on availability and workload.

Pay range: $50–$75/hour (USD) based on background and experience

Interested? Email us at jobs@zotero.org with the subject line “Zotero JavaScript Developer”, let us know why you’re interested in working with us and why you think you’d be a good fit for this role, and include your résumé.