Institution: Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC)

Place: Granada, Spain

Email inquiries: lourdes@iaa.es, sse@iaa.es

Publish Date: 19th December 2019

Updated: 1st March 2020

Link: http://amiga.iaa.es/p/402-Software-engineer-job.htm

The AMIGA (Analysis of the interstellar Medium of Isolated Galaxies) group[1] is leading the development of a Prototype SKA Regional Centre (SRC) at the IAA-CSIC in Granada, to be integrated in the global international network, and is looking for outstanding candidates to jointly apply for a 2-year Software Engineer position (with the possibility of additional extensions based on available funding) for an IAA internal call. Since applications should be made jointly with the AMIGA research group, we recommend potential candidates to get in contact as soon as possible.

Applications: Interested candidates should send an email to lourdes@iaa.es (cc to sse@iaa.es) including their CV, a brief cover letter (max. 2 pages) stating the specific motivation for their application to this position and their suitable background, as well as the contact email of 2 reference persons.

Deadline: We encourage candidates to submit their applications as soon as possible, since the deadline for the joint application will be known soon and updated in this page.

Equal Opportunities: CSIC is a public research organisation in which the right to equality and gender non-discrimination is preserved, while promoting the conditions to real and effective equality of the individuals. Everyone is encouraged to apply.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA, [2]) is a radiotelescope that, once completed, will be the largest scientific infrastructure on Earth. SKA will be the World’s largest generator of scientific data (reaching exa-bytes data rates), thus posing a challenge in the extraction of scientific knowledge, while being driver of technological development in areas such as Big Data. It is expected that SKA will approximately distribute 600 PB/yr of Observatory data products among a network of SKA Regional Centres. These Centres since they will have to provide access to the SKA community to data products, software and computational resources to generate and analyse advanced data products. These includes hence a cloud-computing platform supporting a science archive, analysis services and collaborative tools as well as training and user support.

The IAA SRC Prototype will need to prepare for providing access to SKA science data products via a portal (Science Gateway), as well as the tools and processing power required to fully exploit their science potential, in partnership with HPC facilities, and integrated in the future global network of the SKA Regional Centres. This Prototype will support analysis of data from precursor and pathfinder telescopes. Those will play a crucial role for identifying bottlenecks and preparing for the Big Data challenges following Open Science and FAIR principles[3]. 

Duties and Responsibilities

The AMIGA team is looking for candidates capable of contributing to several of the following tasks:
- Deploy science domain tools on the protoSRC platform
- Identify tools that enable scientific reproducibility / Open Science and deploy them on the protoSRC platform
- Develop tools for sharing/publishing data and methods according to the Open Science principles (e.g. services for accessing data according to Astronomy Virtual Observatory standards).
- Provide support and training workshops on how to access and use the services offered by the protoSRC

Qualifications

The successful candidate must hold a BSc degree in Computer Science or related fields (e.g. Physics, Mathematics). We are looking for a candidate with the ability to adapt to challenges and changes, and who is capable of listening and communicating effectively with others in both English and Spanish.

The ideal candidate will have experience in several of these aspects:
        • Virtualisation tools (virtual machines and containers)
        • Cloud infrastructures (based on OpenStack)
        • Science Gateways
        • Jupyter Notebooks
        • Astrophysics domain software
        • Software development in Python
        • Development of web services and web applications

Duration of the contract: 2 years, with the possibility of additional extensions based on available funding. The position comes with a competitive salary including health insurance, as well as funding for attendance to conferences and training activities.

The successful applicant will work as part of a multidisciplinary team of astronomers and engineers, with a large expertise on radio-astronomy, distributed computing infrastructures, Open Science and Data science. The group leads as well the Spanish participation in the SKA project.

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[1] The AMIGA team is leading the development of an SRC at IAA-CSIC and participates in SKA at three levels: 
- Scientific level: AMIGA science is aligned with 3 out of the 12 High Priority Goals of SKA, on the study of the atomic gas (HI) and magnetic fields in galaxies.

- Coordination level: The AMIGA PI (Lourdes Verdes-Montenegro) coordinates the Spanish participation in the SKA project (since 2011) and was appointed by the Ministry as the Spanish representative in the SKA Regional Centre Steering Committee.

- Technological level: AMIGA has contributed to the design of the SKA Science Data Processor and is a member of the H2020 project AENEAS, focused on the design of a federated network of European SKA Regional Centres (SRCs). In addition, the AMIGA team is active in the area of scientific reproducibility and is contributing to a set of Open Science principles to be incorporated into the design of SKA and the SRCs. In particular, it participates in the H2020 project ESCAPE, focused on addressing the Open Science challenge shared by the Astronomy and Particle Physics ESFRI infrastructures, including SKA.

[2] The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an international effort, classified as a Landmark within the ESFRI roadmap since 2016. The SKA-related efforts involve more than 1000 scientists and engineers from 20 countries and 270 institutions across 5 continents, sharing the goal of building a multi-purpose radio-observatory operating at centimetre and metre wavelengths that will be the largest scientific infrastructure on Earth. The SKA radio interferometer has the potential to make revolutionary contributions to Astrophysics, Astrobiology, and Fundamental Physics.

[3] The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship:
https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618. See "F","A","I","R" list.