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Engineering Support to Gaia Science Operations
2015-04-15 13:05:37| Space-careers.com Jobs RSS
Aurora is an established supplier of skilled manpower to ESA and in particular at ESTEC and ESAC. Aurora has the opportunity to expand our support to Gaia within the Science and Robotic Exploration Directorate DSRE. Aurora currently has a team of 20 engineers and scientists at ESAC including 6 on Gaia itself. Overview ESAs Gaia mission is mapping to microarcsecond accuracy 1 of the stellar population of our galaxy that is around one thousand million objects down to apparent magnitude 20. Each object will be seen about 100 times over the five year mission. The data reduction of the 100 Terabytes of downlinked data is estimated to require a Petabyte storage system. The processing will be community wide effort performed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium DPAC in which ESAC plays a coordination role. The ESAC team in Gaias Science Operations Centre SOC is heavily involved in DPAC especially in the overall architecture and developing and operating key parts of the core processing systems. The core processing includes Initial Data Treatment IDT, First Look FL and the Astrometric Global Iterative Solution AGIS to solve for the many unknown astrometric parameters. The processing is distributed over five locations and ESAC forms the hub for data exchange via the Main Database MDB. The MDB forms the input for all processing and will be augmented with the output of all processing to arrive at a new version. The production of processing software for Gaia will continue through operations to final catalogue production in 2019. The SOC maintains core software as well as receiving packages from external entities to be integrated and run in SOC. Specific Service Tasks As part of the service the following main activities will have to be carried out Contribute to procedure writing and the implementation of those procedures Follow procedures and operate Gaia SOC systems Test SOC systems for the daily processing of raw Gaia data Test SOC systems for the generation of payload operations requests Further test and scale SOC products such as MDB Participate in the optimisation of software processing Gather operational constraints for software running at SOC Interact appropriately with and support the providers of all software SOC systems Interact appropriately with the users of DPCE data products and other Data Processing Centres Assist in automation of SOC procedures nominally Gaia SOC will only be manned normal working hours Contribute to the maintenance of the overall system, including configuration control and versioning Provide support for testing, particularly for EndtoEnd E2E and operational rehearsal campaigns Report on operational activities including the gathering and presentation of processing summary statistics For any candidate experience in interacting with the science community would be an advantage. The selected contractors must be willing operate in a team environment and to travel. Good interpersonal and communication skills are an advantage. You should be comfortable in an international working environment, as it is expected that the selected contractor will interact freely with any member of the DPAC, as well as the general international community of astronomersusers via workshops and the helpdesk. Specific qualification requirements At least a graduate degree Masters or Ph.D. in a relevant subject area Relevant professional experience of at least 4 years You must be able to work in English Specific knowledge is required in the following areas Past astronomical instrument or spacecraft support with a major international space or groundbased observatory Support to the professional astronomical community for a spacebased mission Experience in operating large and distributed data processing systems Use of spacebased scientific data in support of science research ECSS standards for software development Database interaction using JDBC Subversion Large Databasesdata processing 1TB LaTeX Legal and Security Requirements All applicants must be legally allowed to work in Spain without the need to obtain a work visa. Only European Union citizens can be employed by Aurora in Spain. Applicants are required to provide a copy of their passport and degree certificate. Aurora will validate the Degree with the issuing University and provide evidence to ESA. In line with ESAs security requirements, prior to issuing a letter of employment the applicant shall provide to Aurora a recent official document declaring that they are of good conduct from the country where currently resident, and Aurora will validate your employment history. Location It is expected that the work will be performed at the ESAC, the European Space Astronomy Centre, at Villafranca del Castillo, near Madrid, Spain. Contract You will be registered for both social security and tax in Spain. The standard working hours are 40 per week. There are 12 public holidays and an additional 29 annual days holiday. In addition to public health services Aurora provides private medical insurance in Spain. Training to improve efficiency and provide strength for future career are of course included. Aurora can assist financially and provide recent experience information for relocation. To be considered for this Position Provide prior to 27 April 2015 a summary of why you are a good candidate for the position together with a complete and detailed Recruitment Form to Mr. Andy McGarry, at email andy.mcgarryaurora.nl quoting reference SRE108. Aurora will agree conditional employment terms and conditions with candidates before presenting their detailed technical proposal and candidates to ESA by 1 May 2015.
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