Job description
Join the NovaScope Institute for Astrophysical Research as an Astro Data Scientist. This role blends astronomical data analysis, software development, and collaborative science to advance telescope data pipelines and predictive models.
Based in Flagstaff, Arizona, you will contribute to large-scale data processing, research-grade analytics, and open-source software used by astronomers worldwide.
Qualifications include strong Python proficiency, experience with Astropy and cloud/HPC environments, and a passion for uncovering cosmic insights.
Responsibility
- Develop and maintain data ingestion, calibration, and archival pipelines for telescope datasets.
- Build scalable analysis workflows in Python using Astropy, NumPy, SciPy.
- Collaborate with astronomers to translate scientific questions into reproducible analyses.
- Implement ML-based anomaly detection and time-series classification on large datasets.
- Optimize data models and queries in cloud or HPC environments (AWS, GCP, or on-premises).
- Create visualization dashboards and reporting tools for research collaborators.
- Document software and contribute to open-source projects; publish results with teams.
- Present findings at internal and external meetings and contribute to scientific publications.
Qualification
- PhD in Astronomy, Astrophysics, Physics, Computer Science, or equivalent research experience (MS with substantial research also considered).
- 3+ years of experience in astronomical data analysis and Python development.
- Proficiency with Python libraries: Astropy, NumPy, SciPy, pandas; experience with ML libraries a plus.
- Experience with SQL/NoSQL databases and data modeling; cloud computing (AWS/GCP) and HPC familiarity.
- Strong software engineering practices: version control (Git), testing, and documentation.
- Experience with Linux/Unix environments; containerization (Docker) a plus.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills; publications or software releases are a plus.
- Bonus: data visualization (Matplotlib, Bokeh, Tableau) and interactive notebooks.