Quality Assurance Scientist

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Job Summary

IPAC at the California Institute of Technology invites applications for one or more Quality Assurance Scientists to work on the Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEOS) program. NEOS is a NASA Planetary Defense mission, scheduled for launch in late 2027, that will detect, track, and characterize solar system small bodies that pose a hazard to the Earth. The NEOS observatory consists of a passively cooled 50 cm telescope located near Sun-Earth L1 equipped with a wide-field camera that will image the sky simultaneously in two mid-infrared bands. NEOS will detect approximately 200,000 Main Belt Asteroids, NEOs, and comets each day against a background of hundreds of millions of distant stars and galaxies.

IPAC is developing and will operate the NEOS Survey Data System (NSDS) that ingests raw data from the flight system, processes those data into calibrated images and source detections, performs automated searches for moving solar system objects, assesses the quality of the survey data, and distributes data products to NASA archives and the user community. The NSDS QA Scientists will be part of the Team who are the final arbiters for the daily NEOS data processing, and who vet the NEOS data products prior to their release to the user community.

Essential Job Duties

As a Quality Assurance Scientist, you will report to the NSDS Lead Scientist and Lead Quality Assurance Scientist. Your duties will include:

• Prior to the launch of NEOS, you will assist with development and testing of the NSDS systems that produce automated quality reports from data processing and longer-term trending, and support performance testing of elements of the NSDS such as photometry, astrometry, automated detection classification, and moving object tracklet generation.
• During NEOS survey operations, you will review the automated NSDS data quality summaries that track data through each stage of the processing, review the list of automatically detected moving solar system object tracklets prior to their delivery to the IAU Minor Planet Center, and monitor long-term trending checks of data quality metrics.
• In preparation for the release of NEOS data products to the user community, you will assist with characterizing and documenting products for the NEOS data user guide.
• You will also contribute specialized analysis tools for off-line checks, such as those to be done during NEO Surveyor's Science Verification phase just after launch.

The Quality Assurance Scientists are expected to be active participants in the general activities of the IPAC Staff, and to conduct a research program that ideally makes use of data from the NEO Surveyor mission.

Basic Qualifications

• PhD or an equivalent degree in Planetary Science, Astronomy, or a related technical field.
• 3 years of experience in the analysis and interpretation of astronomical imaging data.
• Knowledge of scientific programming and scripting for analyzing astronomical data sets.
• Good communication skills, which will be needed to liaise with other members of the NEOS science data quality assurance team.
• The ability to write and maintain documents that describe the results of analyses of data attributes and quality.

Preferred Qualifications

Besides these basic qualifications, there are a set of skills and experience that will enhance your contributions as the NEOS Quality Assurance Scientist. The following might give you a head start, but even if these don't describe you or your experience, we would still like to hear from you.

• Experience analyzing data from modern infrared array detectors, preferably from space-based telescopes.
• Experience conducting statistical analyses of large astronomical data sets.
• Plans for an active research program that ideally makes use of data from the NEOS mission.

Required Documents

• Cover Letter
• Curriculum Vitae
• Names and Contact information of 3 references
• Applications deadline: January 6, 2025.

IPAC, part of the Physics, Math, and Astronomy Division at Caltech (www.caltech.edu), partners with NASA, NSF, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL, operated for NASA by Caltech), and the world-wide research community to advance exploration of our universe. IPAC provides science operations, user support, data and archive services, and scientific vision to maximize discovery with observatories both in space and on the ground. Scientists at IPAC have access to Palomar Observatory and other research facilities.