Fullstack Developer Educredentials

Would you like to help build digital solutions that advance education? As a full-stack developer at SURF, you’ll have the opportunity to work on innovative platforms that make a real difference for students, teachers, and educational institutions across the Netherlands. As part of an open and technically strong team, you’ll develop smart, future-proof solutions and help build the next generation of digital credentials. Ready to make an impact? Then we’d love to meet you.

Where you will work

SURF is the ICT cooperative for Dutch educational and research institutions. Together with them, we work on digital services and complex innovation challenges to enhance the quality of education and research. Within the Accessible and Open Education & Research (AOER) department, we work with institutions to develop smart solutions for flexible education, digital learning materials, and the sharing of educational data. As a full-stack developer, you’ll play your part in this.

Working at SURF means working for a unique and open organization. This is evident in everything: the structure of the organization, the setup of the project teams, the culture in our offices, and the atmosphere among colleagues. SURF offers excellent terms of employment and takes a flexible approach to work/life balance. Employees enjoy working independently. In addition, everyone is given the space and freedom to use and develop their talents as effectively and broadly as possible.

The team you will join

You’ll be joining a relatively new team: the Development Team. This team consists of platform engineers, various developers, and designers, and will continue to grow in the coming months. That means that, as a new developer, you’ll help shape the culture and the team itself.

The Development Team provides the SURF Development Platform, software developers, and designers to various multidisciplinary product teams within the unit. We have an open attitude toward one another and help each other out when needed. As part of this team, you will be assigned to the edubadges/educredentials product team.

What you will do

As a developer, you’ll play a key role in the ongoing development of the edubadges service and its successor, educredentials. Edubadges is the platform through which 60 vocational, higher vocational, and university institutions issue digital credentials, including microcredentials. This allows learners to demonstrate their knowledge and skills and easily share them with educational institutions or employers. You will contribute to the further development of this platform and help build its future-proof successor, based on the latest standards and technologies and well-integrated with other educational applications.

Other tasks you handle:

• Designing, developing, and maintaining a reliable, scalable, and secure platform.
• Further developing the backend and frontend components of Edubadges and the new Educredentials
• Implementing integrations with educational systems (SIS, LMS, portfolios).
• Implementing authorization/authentication (SURFconext, EduID, OAuth2).
• Developing dashboards and interfaces for management purposes.
• Implementing standards such as Open Badges 3.0, Verifiable Credentials, and OOAPI.
• Actively contributing to the team’s results and the further professionalization of the development culture.

Your skills and experience

You are a curious and dedicated developer who enjoys working on reliable and future-proof digital solutions. You thrive in an environment where technology, collaboration, and social impact converge. You prefer to work according to Agile principles and have a strong focus on privacy and security by design. In addition, you enjoy contributing ideas for new applications, work independently, and actively seek collaboration within multidisciplinary teams.

In addition, you have:

• A bachelor’s degree or equivalent level of education and thinking, preferably in computer science or a related field.
• Experience with backend development in Python/Django and knowledge of Rust.
• Experience with frontend development using frameworks such as Vue.js or Svelte.
• Knowledge of RESTful APIs, OAuth2, JWT, and encryption/signing.
• Experience with CI/CD, DevOps, and containerization (Docker/Kubernetes).
• Experience with or interest in open standards such as Open Badges, Verifiable Credentials, and OOAPI.
• Experience with or affinity for learning management systems such as Osiris, Canvas, and Brightspace.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to effectively engage with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, in both Dutch and English

It is a plus if you:

• Have experience with modern (open source) development methodologies and tooling, such as CI/CD pipelines and container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes
• Have an affinity for social or education-related issues

SURF takes pleasure in doing its recruitment itself; acquisition is therefore not appreciated.