What We Do

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) works worldwide to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to people affected by conflict and armed violence. We take action in response to emergencies and, at the same time, promote respect for international humanitarian law. We are an independent and neutral organization, and our mandate stems essentially from the Geneva Conventions of 1949. We work closely with National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and with their International Federation in order to ensure a concerted, rational and rapid humanitarian response to the needs of the victims of armed conflict or any other situation of internal violence. We direct and coordinate the international activities conducted in these situations.

The Safeguarding of ICRC archives is a key pillar of the Institutional Strategy 2024–2027, recognized as a crucial deliverable under Accelerating Digital Transformation (SO 7.4). As part of its mandate the institution places significant importance in preserving the history of humanitarian action, international humanitarian law (IHL), and its own institutional legacy. The ICRC archives document 160 years of humanitarian response, contributing to the duty of remembrance and fulfilling the organization's legal and statutory obligations.

Purpose of the Position

The role contributes to the digitization of archival records (mainly paper, but also microforms, photos, audios, and videos) by ensuring the proper metadata management and indexation for all digitized archival records, representing an estimated 30-40mio pages. In a second phase, the scope will be broadened to process also millions of digital-born records. This high-volume project involves two main aspects: transforming digitized archival holdings as well as born-digital records into machine-readable text and managing the resulting (meta) data for proper indexation in the archival management system. This is seen as a key foundation for enabling the searchability and accessibility of digital archival records through semantic search.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

• Oversees from a business perspective the optical character and layout recognition (OCR and HTR) pipeline carried out by an external service provider and the internal data team to transform digitized and already digital available archival records into machine-readable text (an estimated total of 30-40mio digitized records and presumably the same amount of digital born records). 
• Implements quality control protocols to verify the quality of the OCR process output and stays in a feedback dialogue with both the provider and the internal data team.
• Cleans and complements both descriptive and technical metadata and ensures proper indexation in the archival management system, mainly via scripting.
• Contributes to the maintenance and evolution of the ICRC archives metadata frameworks, especially to the IRCR ontology.
• Contributes to the development of the knowledge graph and the semantic search capabilities for the future archival access portal.
• Supports the ongoing process optimization by providing feedback and suggestions for improvement of collaboration internally as well as with the external service provider.
• Provides advice and solutions on building a highly automated sustainable digital archiving pipeline in the future with special focus on data handling, quality monitoring and management
• Is knowledgeable and pro-active in the field of AI to harness the power of LLMs especially in applying AI techniques for process enhancement, automatic metadata generation, and information extraction using machine learning.

Desired Profile and Skills

• Ability to handle image analysis software and quality controls
• Practice understanding of AI algorithms, their implementation and training
• Meticulous attention to detail
• Strong organizational and logistical skills
• Practical mentality, systematic way of working.
• Ability to be flexible and embrace frequent change

Reports to (role)

Head of General Archives

Relationships

• Internally: Works closely with staff involved in the digitization and digital preservation of archives, in ARCLIB, Support and Digital Transformation and Technology and Information.
• Externally: Works closely with external service providers in charge of the optical character recognition and process and the extraction of information from digital records.

Education and Experience required

• University Degree in Archives, Information Science or related field, or equivalent professional experience
• Professional experience as archivist, librarian or data scientist
• Expertise in descriptive, administrative and technical metadata standards (e.g. RiC, Dublin Core, MODS, PREMIS, METS, ISAD-G)
• Experience with AI-driven data modelling, semantic search and linked data principles (RDF, SPARQL)
• Computer proficiency
• Fluency in English and French is required

Additional Information

• Type of role: Open Ended Contract
• Working rate: 100%
• Starting date: ASAP
• Location: Geneva
• Job level: B3
• Length of assignment: until 28th Feb 2028 (renewable contract)
• Type of position: Required Rotation
• Application deadline: Sunday, 1st Feb 2026

The ICRC values diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive working environment. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates.

Our values

• At the ICRC, we value impact, collaboration, respect, and compassion. We seek candidates who demonstrate behaviors based on these shared values. For more information on the ICRC values, please visit this page.