Principal Astronomical Data Scientist

Support NASA missions! The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is a multi-mission science and flight operations center for NASA’s flagship observatories on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus in Baltimore, Maryland. The Data Management Division at the STScI is hiring a Principal Astronomical Data Scientist, to help advance our data analysis tools for our NASA flagship missions primarily in areas of data visualization. STScI is the science operations center for several NASA missions. This position can support hybrid work onsite and at home. Candidates must reside in or be willing to relocate to our local market. (MD, DE, VA, PA, DC & WV). This position requires US Citizenship or Permanent Residence in order to meet ITAR requirements.

As a Principal Staff Astronomical Data Scientist your duties will be two-fold. Your primary role will be a Product Owner of a Scrum team that develops data analysis tools and Jupyter notebooks for the astronomical community. In this role you will set priorities for the team and work with stakeholders to set product vision, direction and goals. You will actively engage with the astronomy community, gathering feedback to ensure that data analysis tools meet the needs of both the missions and the broader scientific community, while ensuring that the development meets goals.

Secondly, you will contribute to software and algorithm development, user support, training, and software engineering process improvement. STScI has been a major contributor to the open-source scientific Python software stack, including NumPy, Matplotlib, SciPy, Jdaviz and Astropy. You will be developing both the analysis tools focusing on the challenges of data visualization and the technical aspects of Jupyter notebooks through which they can be accessed and in a cloud environment.

You will contribute to packages that numerical & scientific programming for image processing, spectroscopy, photometry, astrometry, general signal processing, modeling and statistics, or numerical simulations.

Responsibilities include:

• Engage directly with software developers to drive product success
• Translating the science needs and mission requirements into specifications for data analysis tools
• Serve as the main point of contact between stakeholders and the product development team
• Prioritize and maintain the product backlog
• Promote the data analysis tools through community outreach, conferences and meetings
• You will, design, develop, test and deploy software to assist astronomers in analyzing astronomical data, in close collaboration with STScI’s technical and scientific staff
• You will provide technical and scientific development to Python notebooks that focus on scientific use cases

Qualifications:

• You have worked with astronomical data and understand user needs from a pipeline and data analysis perspective. HST and JWST a plus.
• You have advanced Python Experience in multiprocessing, multithreading, or optimizing performance of Python code for large datasets is a plus.
• You are comfortable with writing unit tests and with test-driven development.

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in Astronomy or Physics or a comparable degree
• An advanced degree in Astronomy, Physics, or a related field is preferred, with 15+ years of experience in an astronomical research role or as an observatory scientist supporting astronomical research
• Education or professional background in astronomy, or software development in a research environment is helpful