LAC Federal is seeking an experienced Alma Platform Manager to provide senior technical support to a federal agency. This highly specialized role combines Ex Libris Alma systems administration, Python-based workflow automation, metadata and data integration, change management, and operational monitoring in support of library systems used for cataloging, metadata management, acquisitions, indexing, and downstream integrations, while Python pipelines support indexing QA/QC, indexing production, and cross-system synchronization. The successful candidate will work collaboratively with agency librarians, technical information specialists, IT personnel, metadata and acquisitions teams, and external vendors to maintain a secure, reliable, well-governed, and continuously improving library systems environment.
Work Arrangement: On-site in Beltsville, Maryland, with potential for hybrid flexibility.
Responsibilities
- Administer and maintain Ex Libris Alma, including system components, user roles and permissions, profiles, metadata configurations, normalization rules, integrations, authentication/SSO functionality, audit logs, and related system configurations.
- Monitor and troubleshoot Alma jobs and data workflows, resolving disruptions affecting ingest, indexing, publishing, preservation, and other mission-critical processes.
- Maintain and enhance Python-based data pipelines supporting automated ingestion, transformation, indexing, synchronization, error handling, and secure credential management.
- Execute the complete change-management lifecycle including impact and dependency analysis, sandbox testing, deployment planning, validation, post-deployment verification, documentation, rollback planning/execution, and emergency-change procedures.
- Participate in Agile/Scrum activities, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, user stories, acceptance criteria, story pointing, remediation activities, and retrospectives while ensuring work complies with change-control and governance requirements.
- Maintain operational monitoring and service-management capabilities, including dashboards, job monitoring, least-privilege access, audit-log review, incident management, and secure handling of data and pipeline outputs.
- Support business continuity and release management, including backup/restore readiness, recovery procedures, configuration-drift remediation, failed-import and indexing recovery, freeze periods, and Ex Libris release windows.
- Diagnose and resolve complex cross-system metadata and data-flow issues involving Alma, metadata schemas, upstream ingestion scripts, indexing processes, relational or cloud databases, and downstream preservation synchronization.
- Collaborate with internal teams for data management, IT services, library acquisitions, metadata, systems librarians and external vendords
- Maintain technical and governance documentation, including runbooks, configuration snapshots, Change Request Logs, release notes, workflow documentation, and Confluence-ready artifacts.
- Develop and report operational performance metrics, including job success/failure rates, mean time to repair (MTTR), ingest quality, indexing latency, and incident trends, and support biweekly, quarterly, and annual CCB reporting.
- Support compliance with applicable Federal requirements, including information security, data governance, privacy, accessibility, configuration management, and documentation requirements.
