Description

You will work within the ESA ɸ-lab, an innovation lab of the ESA Climate Action, Sustainability and Science Department, and will report to the Head of the Φ-lab Explore Office (EOP-S8E). The Explore Office aims to promote and implement disruptive and transformative innovation in Earth Observation (EO).

The Φ-lab vision is to accelerate the future of EO and act as a hub and catalyst, connecting a growing ecosystem of innovative capabilities across Europe between EO and transformative technologies, for example from the ICT revolution. Φ-lab brings together experts from around the world to develop research on emerging digital technology topics, including AI, blockchain, IoT, cloud/edge computing, extended reality (augmented and virtual reality combined), HPC and quantum computing, in the context of EO. Φ-lab also contributes to the European Commission’s Destination Earth (DestinE) initiative and ESA’s Digital Twin Earth (DTE) element of the European Earth Watch Programme by exploring disruptive and transformative innovation within the EO landscape to be transferred as new products and services from industry to industry.

Duties

You will contribute to transformative and disruptive digital innovation in the Earth Observation domain with a particular focus on positive impact for mainstream Earth Observation programmes within the Agency.

You will be responsible for exploring, in the space and non-space domains, digital innovations for delivery with positive impacts on ESA mainstream activities and the ESA ecosystem of industry, academia and the scientific community.

Your tasks will include:

• promoting the generation, connection and sharing of ideas to engage with the innovation ecosystem;
• analysing innovation trends and opportunities within the ecosystem;
• developing plans for nurturing and testing ideas and promoting adoption, with the ability to increase ideas’ TRLs, fostering their uptake;
• initiating and preparing technical specifications and statements of work and overseeing projects for competitive tendering and execution by industry;
• overseeing innovative EO projects that exploit rapid advances in digital technologies to encourage the adoption of these technologies in Europe’s EO ecosystem and in ESA mainstream activities;
• contributing to the development of a European innovative EO ecosystem, providing encouragement to companies new to EO, IT companies, leading universities and high-tech start-ups;
• assisting in the agile development of methods fostering discovery, facilitating innovation and accelerating adoption, for example by organising bootcamps, challenges, workshops and space app camps;
• contributing to the set-up of EO challenges, assisting with data preparation and curation, analytics and the preparation of large-scale training data sets;
• supporting connection with DestinE for digital innovation creation and/or adoption;
• coordinating activities performed in collaboration with DestinE and ESA DTE teams, promoting ESA’s activities to students, researchers, industry and policy makers and stimulating cross-fertilisation and new ideas;
• collaborating with partners in academia, the private sector and the start-up ecosystem to foster innovative EO solutions and shape future EO missions;
• providing technical and management support to the Φ-lab team and supporting the presentation of new ideas and plans to high-level stakeholders;
• engaging with internal and external stakeholders to enhance innovative thinking in and around ESA;
• coordinating with the Invest Office to develop success cases of disruptive and transformative technologies exploited in InCubed activities;
• networking proactively with all EOP organisational units to increase awareness and collaboration with the Φ-lab Explore Office, addressing the problems and opportunities they define, facilitating their initiatives and channelling results into their projects.

Technical competencies

Behavioural competencies

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

For more information, please refer to the ESA Core Behavioural Competencies guidebook

Education

You should have a master’s degree or equivalent qualification in a relevant discipline. A PhD in a relevant subject is an asset.

Additional requirements

You should have relevant experience in technology development and digital innovation with a strong ability to think outside the box and deliver a plan for disruptive and transformative digital innovation creation or adoption within the EO ecosystem.

You have a successful track record of and solid experience in managing innovation programmes, preferably in an international context, excellent cognitive, analytical, communication and relationship management skills, and the ability to launch and sustain collaborative initiatives with industrial partners and stakeholders on a non-exchange-of-funds basis.