National Museums Scotland
Natural Sciences Collections Senior Digitiser
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Natural Sciences Collections Senior Digitiser | Full time | 35 hours | Fixed Term until 31 March 2028
Salary: £34,368 to £37,189 per annum
Hours: 35 hours per week | Monday - Friday
Location: National Museums Collection Centre, Granton, and National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street | Fully on-site, multi-site working
National Museums Scotland is one of the leading museum groups in Europe with one of the largest and most diverse collections in the world.
As an organisation our values are Creative, Inclusive, Collaborative and Forward-thinking.
We are looking for a careful, motivated and collaborative individual to join our Natural Sciences team.
Benefits of joining us as our Natural Sciences Collections Senior Digitiser include:
- Annually, alongside your salary, National Museums Scotland contributes 28.97% of this towards you being a member of the Civil Service Pension Scheme
- A generous annual leave of 28.5 days - rising to 33.5 after 5 years, plus an additional 8 paid public holidays.
- Free access to national (and international) museums and exhibitions
- A range of wellbeing benefits including Employee Assistance Programme 24/7
- Access to all the above and more from day one of employment.
About the Natural Sciences Collections Senior Digitiser role:
Help unlock Scotland’s insect collections for research and public discovery. You will lead the day-to-day work of a small team digitising insect specimens, coordinating workflows from specimen preparation and imaging through to databasing and quality assurance. Working closely with Natural Sciences curators and collections colleagues, you will help ensure that digitisation is delivered efficiently, safely and consistently, producing high-quality digital records and images for colleagues, researchers and the public.
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This role is part of the DiSSCo-UK project, funded by UKRI. DiSSCo UK (Distributed System of Scientific Collections) is a £155 million, 10-year national programme to digitise and connect the UK’s natural science collections. The programme is funded through the UKRI Infrastructure Fund and delivered by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in partnership with the Natural History Museum and more than 100 partners across the UK. The digitiser posts are associated with the first phase of the project focusing on pinned insects (NMS) and herbarium sheets (RBGE).
As a Natural Sciences Collections Senior Digitiser at National Museums Scotland you will:
- Lead and coordinate the day-to-day work of a small team of digitisers, setting priorities, allocating work and planning delivery in consultation with curatorial colleagues.
- Oversee end-to-end digitisation workflows, ensuring specimen preparation, imaging and data capture follow agreed handling procedures, data standards and project protocols.
- Maintain the quality and integrity of specimen data and digital images, overseeing quality assurance, resolving routine issues and escalating complex, fragile or at-risk material where appropriate.
- Safeguard specimens and associated information throughout digitisation, while maintaining project documentation, supporting reporting and helping to improve the efficiency and quality of workflows.
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Skills and experience we’re looking for in our Natural Sciences Collections Senior Digitiser:
- Experience of working in a digitisation or collections-based environment using structured workflows and standards, including handling delicate natural science or comparable collections.
- Experience of supporting, supervising or coordinating staff, volunteers or project teams, with the ability to organise work, set priorities and maintain quality while meeting targets.
- Knowledge of collection digitisation workflows, including imaging, data capture, quality assurance, digital file management and the use of databases or collection-management systems.
- Strong attention to detail and sound judgement, with the ability to assess the quality of specimen data and images, handle delicate material safely and identify when issues require correction or escalation.
Please be sure to view relevant attachments for this role (available on our Careers Portal: careers.nms.ac.uk) for full details of the position.
The closing date for this role is 24 August 2026. The Selection Event is likely to take place during the week commencing 14 September 2026.
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