What will the future know of today? Archives, as the homes for our collective memories, are in the future business. Your work will ensure that today’s digital records are accessible to the next generation of citizens, researchers and historians.

Archives matter. Without records, we could not hold government to account, carry out pioneering research or learn from the past. Today’s government websites will form a crucial evidence base and a rich source of context for future generations wishing to understand the operation of the state and its relationship with citizens. In recognition of this, The National Archives runs the UK Government Web Archive, one of the largest and most-used web archives in the world.

As our Web Archive Technical Specialist, you’ll develop our preservation process for the web archive collection with the support of colleagues and will work with our supplier to deliver it as an ongoing process. You will help unlock the research potential of the collection through facilitating access to the raw data and datasets based on the collection. Working within a team dedicated to continually improving the service for users, you will be a strong advocate for using innovative technologies to solve some big, often novel, challenges in an organisation that offers great support and exceptional benefits.

In the 15 years of its existence, the UK Government Web Archive has become a large and varied digital collection. At an approximate size of 140TB, with 5 billion objects, it presents some unique and exciting challenges.

Our supplier provides the majority of web crawling and service provision but there is plenty for our team to do. You will help us ensure that the web archive is of extremely high quality and the actual preservation of the captured content is done at Kew, after it has been transferred to us from our supplier. You will be responsible for making sure that the processes supporting this are robust, well-designed and run smoothly. In doing this, you will have the opportunity to develop your understanding of the practical applications of cloud technologies.

As a member of the web archiving team you will be supporting our varied work in making sure that the service meets user needs. You will provide crucial technical advice and services to help us open the web archive to research possibilities, supporting exciting research into the unique dataset.

You’ll be a problem solver, able to think creatively and use novel approaches in order to meet the varied needs of our users. You’ll come with a desire to innovate, challenge what we’re doing and drive forward improvements to our service. In turn we will invest in developing your skills with cloud technologies, programming languages, and other areas as required.

Join us here in beautiful Kew, just 10 minutes’ walk from the Overground and Underground stations, and you can expect an excellent range of benefits. They include learning and development opportunities, a pension and discounts with local businesses (e.g. beauty salons and bars). We also offer wellbeing resources (e.g. on-site therapists) and have an on-site gym, restaurant, shop and staff bar. There is the possibility with this position of it being part-time or an option to job share.