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Software Engineering Support to Gaia Science Operations
2015-06-24 10:04:22| 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 26 engineers and scientists at ESAC including 6 on Gaia itself. Overview ESAs Gaia mission is designed to create an accurate and complete astrometric catalogue which will serve for decades to come More than 1000 Million objects mostly stars in our Milky Way down to apparent magnitude 20 will be repeatedly observed from the second Lagrange point L2 during the satellites nominal lifetime of 5 years. This will yield a raw data volume of about 100 TB 1 PB total from which each stars position, trigonometric parallax, and proper motion for a smaller subset also radial velocity will be determined to microarcsec accuracy typically 25 as for parallax at 15th magnitude. The data processing and catalogue creation is carried out by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium DPAC formed by around 400 individuals and six main data processing centres distributed across Europe. The Gaia SOC at ESAC is an integral part of DPAC and plays a key role in designing the overall system architecture and developing and operating parts of the Core Processing systems viz. Initial Data Treatment IDT, First Look FL, and the Astrometric Global Iterative Solution. ESAC will also form the hub for data exchange via the Main Database MDB. This MDB will form 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. The final and all intermediate catalogues will be served from ESAC and the corresponding database and access system is developed by a dedicated science archive team SAT in close cooperation with the SOC. In addition to software engineering for core SOC tasks the service is expected to cover some SATSOC interfacing and supportive work in this area Specific Service Tasks As part of the service the following main activities will have to be carried out Maintain and develop and modules, applications, libraries and tools specific to SOC product generation In particular, maintain issue fixing, optimisation existing and develop new code for the common Gaia Tools Java library Optimise code infrastructure and scientific in view of runtime and memory usage Ensure timely delivery of SW releases and relative increments Perform SW architectural design as needed Prepare and maintain SW documentation Develop and maintain unit test harnesses Report on progress and problem areas Participate in the Configuration Control Boards applicable to the development and operation of the software Followingup and tracking the correction and resolution of problem reports Implement approved software enhancement requests 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 A graduate degree 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 OO design JDK 1.71.8 RMI Generics Distributed processing Numerical programming in Java JUnit Eclipse Ant ECSS standards for software development Database interaction using JDBC DBMS Subversion Large Databasesdata processing 1TB 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 30 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 8 July 2015 a detailed Recruitment Form which ends in a motivation letter to Mr. Alex Jeanes, at email alexjeanesaurora.nl quoting reference SRE112. Note it is also possible to send a preliminary motivation letter and CV for initial evaluation. Aurora will agree conditional employment terms and conditions with candidates before presenting their detailed technical proposal and candidates to ESA by 15 July 2015.
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