SENIOR JAVA SOFTWARE DEVELOPER

Aurora is a large Service provider of engineering and scientific support at ESA/ESAC. Employees are our key resource! We know that progress is only achieved by a happy motivated team, that’s why Aurora employs top quality staff by offering challenging work, responsibility, a pleasant environment and excellent remuneration.Aurora has the opportunity to expand our support to two exciting astronomy missions Gaia (as lead software developer – 65%) and Ariel (Software Architect – 35%).OverviewESA’s 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 satellite’s nominal lifetime of 5 years. This will yield a raw data volume of about 100 TB (~1 PB total) from which each star’s position, trigonometric parallax, and proper motion (for a smaller subset also radial velocity) will be determined to micro-arcsec accuracy (typically 25 μas 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 increasing complexity of the DPAC operations, with all DPCs and CUs receiving data products virtually from all other groups, requires detailed understanding of the quality and limitations of the intermediate data products delivered to the Main Data Base.Ariel is the first space mission dedicated to measuring the chemical composition and thermal structures of a large well constructed sample of transiting and eclipsing exoplanets, enabling planetary science far beyond the boundaries of the Solar System.Specific Service TasksThe Gaia DPAC Software Engineer will provide a service to support the following main activities:Work within the group with responsibility for overall system architecture and main database in Gaia.Maintain and support the integration of software changes from consortium scientists and engineers.Maintain front-end UIs used to support data, data model management and other activities in the consortium.Maintain and update software used in the main database, including that used to integrate and consolidate the scientific data products.Interact with members of the SOC and scientific consortium to identify requirements and software change requests.Specify testing and operations activities and support the operations engineer in software validation, optimisation and operations.For Ariel, a future mission, which is anticipated to utilise Java:Contribute to the design of the software architecture in the Ariel SOC.Support the development and integration of the uplink subsystems.Interact with technical developers in the consortium to support the successful integration of consortium-provided. scientific software.Provide support for the definition of the subsystem use cases and software requirements.Specific qualification requirementsUniversity degree in Software Engineering.At least 5 years recent professional experience using Java in front-end and back-end applications.Experience working with large volumes of data (100s of TB).Experience working with complex scientific pipelinesExperience in defining software requirements and test cases.Knowledge of ESA missions is an advantage.Knowledge of and practical experience with managing relational database management systems serving TB-scale datasets, specifically knowledge of PostgreSQL. Experience in working with large astronomical data sets.Experience working in an international environment.Excellent communication skills – notably in interfacing with different stakeholders with diverse backgrounds (for example Scientists).You must be able to work in English.Knowledge of Jupyter Notebook, Jupyter Lab and Jupyter Hub frameworks, their APIs and kernels.Ideally Experience InGit and MavenKnowledge and software engineering experience in Python would also be useful.Knowledge of HTML5, CSS and Javascript and toolkits such as Angular, for development of the data mining front-end, is an assetLegal and Security RequirementsAll applicants must be legally allowed to work in Spain without the need to obtain a work visa. Only European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA) and SWISS 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 ESA’s 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.LocationThe work will be performed at the ESAC , the European Space Astronomy Centre, at Villafranca del Castillo, near Madrid, Spain.ContractThe selected candidate will receive good remuneration in line with responsibility.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.Aurora has a teleworking policy, the main home must be within commuting distance to the work location.To be considered for this PositionAurora shall select a candidate as soon as a good candidate has been identified. Please apply via our Job Application form quoting SCO-179 as reference.If not directly interested, feel free to share by this Job Vacancy with your friends!“That’s one small click to apply, one giant leap for your career development.”