Research Metadata Specialist

About VIB

VIB is a leading life sciences research institute with a unique collaborative model spanning nine research centers and four partner universities. Our mission is to advance life sciences for the benefit of society through scientific excellence, innovation, and collaboration.

At the VIB Data Core , we empower scientists by delivering advanced infrastructure and services that tackle complex challenges in data storage, management, and computing.

About the role

Life-science data reaches its full value only when it is well described, connected and reusable. At VIB Data Core, you will help make that possible.

As our Research Metadata Specialist, you shape how life-science data is described, connected and exchanged across VIB's data platforms, institutional systems and external repositories. You link datasets to the information that gives them meaning: samples, experiments, projects and publications. You make that information structured, machine-readable and consistent, so it supports scientific reuse, institutional reporting, automation and responsible AI.

You work closely with researchers, data stewards, developers and repository teams, and you turn their needs into practical metadata models, mappings and validation rules.

What you will do

• Design and maintain metadata models that connect diverse life-science data (omics, imaging, spatial, etc.) with their scientific and administrative context.
• Select and apply the right standards, controlled vocabularies, ontologies and persistent identifiers, together with domain experts.
• Build and maintain mappings between local systems, the central data platform, external repositories, literature databases and institutional reporting.
• Develop and maintain lightweight, API-based workflows to retrieve and transform metadata and apply mappings, working with developers to integrate the resulting metadata into target systems.
• Define quality requirements and validation rules, and help automate them.
• Coordinate the review, testing, versioning and documentation of metadata models and templates.
• Support and train developers, data stewards and users and use their feedback to keep improving templates and workflows.

Your profile

We welcome applicants from different backgrounds and career paths. If you meet most of the essential requirements, we encourage you to apply.

You bring:

• A Master's degree in bioinformatics, data science, information science, life sciences or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Several years of experience with metadata in life-science research, across a range of data types.
• Experience designing or maintaining metadata schemas, data models or mappings.
• A practical understanding of metadata standards, vocabularies, persistent identifiers and provenance, and how they support FAIR data.
• The ability to read API documentation, work with JSON or XML, and use or adapt scripts.
• Familiarity with Git and with testing and documenting changes.
• A structured, collaborative way of working, with clear communication and documentation.

Strong assets:

• Experience with research repositories, bibliographic databases, data deposition or federated data platforms.
• Experience with ontologies or semantic technologies such as RDF or JSON-LD.
• Experience building reusable metadata transformation or validation tools.

Our offer

• A permanent, full-time position in an international, research-driven organization.
• The chance to shape how research metadata is managed and reused across VIB.
• A varied role, split between strategic projects (such as Open Science and European data initiatives) and the day-to-day running of our metadata, data deposition and archiving services.
• Room to grow in FAIR data, semantic interoperability and knowledge graphs, through training and through national and European initiatives.
• Flexible working, with up to two days per week from home.

The position is based in Ghent and includes travel about two to three times a year.

How to apply

Please apply via the VIB online application form (). A complete application file (English) should contain the following documents:

• your cover/motivation letter
• your CV
• 2 references (optional)

In case of questions, please email [email protected] . 

Get to know VIB

• Listen to our podcast ' Called to Science ' 
• Follow us on LinkedIn .