Software Heritage Expands Research Focus and Seeks New CTO
Since its inception, the Software Heritage archive has been dedicated to serving multiple societal needs: preserving the software commons for future generations, providing a referenceable catalogue of software source code for technology creators, enhancing scientific reproducibility through software archival and persistent identification, and enabling large-scale analyses of public code for a variety of applications.
With innovative tools like the compressed graph representation of the archive, known as swh-graph, we have enabled researchers to analyze the entire structure of the Software Heritage archive on commodity hardware.
We have also led, and contributed to, numerous studies that would not have been possible without Software Heritage. Some have shed light on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) trends in public code. Others have shown how to make very-large scale studies on software artifacts reproducible or possible in the first place. Others yet have produced reusable open datasets for other researchers to build upon.
Stefano Zacchiroli, co-founder and the pioneering CTO of Software Heritage, as well as a Professor of Computer Science at the Polytechnic Institute of Paris, has been instrumental in these achievements. Today, we are thrilled to announce that Stefano will transition to a new role as Chief Scientific Officer. This position will enable him — and Software Heritage as a whole — to intensify our Research & Development efforts, which are central to our mission.
We extend our deepest gratitude to Stefano for his invaluable contributions as CTO. From his foundational design decisions that continue to underpin our archive’s infrastructure, to his early code contributions across our open-source components, and his innovative R&D ideas, Stefano has been a cornerstone of our technical evolution.
Running the technical side of an initiative like Software Heritage is very challenging and cannot remain unattended. While Stefano will keep a hand on his previous CTO responsibilities for the time being, we are also announcing today a search for our new CTO. This person will be responsible for maintaining and advancing the technical infrastructure of Software Heritage, ensuring we continue to meet our ambitious goals.
If you are a visionary leader with a passion for open-source technology and a drive to shape the future of software preservation, we encourage you to apply.
👉 Details of the role and application process can be found in the job description.