Description

The European Space Agency maintains a world-leading Science Programme with missions in heliophysics, planetary science, astrophysics and fundamental physics. Its mission is to ”Empower Europe to lead space science”. 

The Department for Science and Operations (SCI-S), within ESA’s Directorate for Science, host the scientists and engineers that oversee the space missions from study to end of operations; it develops the science operation systems for the missions and operates the missions in space; it archives and curates their data during operations and beyond. Our main objective is to maximise the scientific output of the missions for the benefit of humankind. 

You will be assigned as Science Lead for all ESA Astronomy Observatory Archives for half of your time, as well as Archive Scientist for one or two ESA astronomy observatory missions for the other half, both roles under the direct responsibility of the Head of the Science Archives Development and Operations Section (also known as ESDC – ESAC Science Data Centre) in the Data Science and Archives Division within SCI-S. You will have further functional reporting lines within the mission(s) you support.

Duties

As the Science Lead of ESA Astronomy Observatory Archives, you will be responsible for defining and implementing an innovative science-driven strategy for the archives of the Astronomy Observatory missions. You will oversee the archives development and operations and promote the usage of the archives by the scientific community, with the objective to maximise the missions overall scientific output.

You will work in close collaboration with the Astronomy Observatory missions’ Project Scientists, the individual Astronomy Observatory missions’ Archive Scientists, the ESDC Software and Data Systems Architect and with the members of the Astronomy Observatory Archives Users Group.

Specific responsibilities of the Science Lead role include: 

• defining and implementing an innovative and science-driven strategy for the development, operations and evolution of ESA   Astronomy Observatory archives, in coordination with the other missions’ Archives Scientists and in line with the Department’s overall strategy for the archives;
• coordinating with the relevant stakeholders from Astronomy Observatory missions (Astronomy Archives Users Group, Archive scientists, Project Scientists, Mission/Development managers and Science Operation Centres), to develop guidelines for long-term preservation of data, their access and exploitation, and for facilitating multi-mission astronomy science research  ;
• coordinating the definition, requirements and roadmap for multi-mission archives were relevant;
• actively promoting cooperation with the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, with external partner space agencies and with the scientific community.

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Specific responsibilities of the Archive Scientist role for ESA astronomy observatory missions include: 

• ownership of use cases and drivers for the mission archives including:
  • interface with the Project Scientist, the Science Operations Centre (SOC) team, other Archive Science Leads, other Archive Scientists, as well as the external stakeholders (Instrument Teams and the Mission scientific community), to provide   the science use cases that drive the mission archive   and determine the priorities for their implementation;
  • provide scientific support and steer the development and operations of the astronomy mission archives for the supported ESA Observatory missions, providing the ESDC development team with an Archive User Requirements Document   as a baseline for implementation;
• monitoring the implementation, testing and expected performance of the archive, based on use cases gathered by the Mission team   and derived requirements; in particular, defining and performing the end user acceptance testing of the different archive versions prior to their release to the scientific community;
• with the help of the Instrument Operations Scientists, supervising and coordinating the definition and provision of science data products and any higher-level data products from the community or Instrument Teams as needed, including liaising over submission schedules and content;
• liaising with any internal and external providers to ensure completeness of all levels of data products, with the maximum science quality, contributing to the optimization and refinement of the archive products when possible;
• encouraging and contributing to the science exploitation of the missions’ data products, through archive usage;
• participating to the Archive Scientist meetings / user groups and sharing ideas and proposals for the strategy and promotion of the ESA Science Archives;
• supporting the scientific community through a helpdesk system on archive and data product related questions.

As scientist in the Department, you are required to actively pursue personal scientific research, publishing articles using archival data, and to actively participate in the Department’s research activities.

Technical competencies

Behavioural competencies

Result Orientation
Operational Efficiency
Fostering Cooperation
Relationship Management
Continuous Improvement
Forward Thinking

Education

A PhD in Astrophysics is required for this post.

Additional requirements

Assets for this position include:

• experience in promoting science to the wider scientific community and general public
• experience in Agile and DevOps methodologies, Human Factors Engineering (UX design) and associated technologies and of their use in modern software engineering;
• experience with outreach activities.