Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available until 31 March 2026 in the first instance with good prospects for further extension subject to grant funding. The anticipated start date is 1st December 2024 or as early as possible thereafter.

This is an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic Astronomical Data Scientist to work within the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) at the Institute of Astronomy (IoA) as part of CASU's spectroscopic analysis system development team.

WEAVE, MOONS and 4MOST are major massively-multiplexed optical/NIR spectrographs currently under advanced stages of development, to be deployed on the 4.2-m William Herschel, ESO VLT and VISTA telescopes respectively. They will enable large, cutting-edge spectroscopic surveys to be undertaken across both hemispheres, observing millions of stars and galaxies during their initial multi-year survey periods. The CASU team has developed the spectroscopic pipelines for WEAVE and 4MOST and has responsibility for the final development, commissioning and operations of the data pipelines. CASU is developing the data flow system and housing the survey operations centre for MOONS.

The successful candidate will join CASU's software development team, developing novel scientific algorithms and applications in the areas of spectroscopic analysis and mining of the science data catalogues extracted from the pipelines. Responsibilities range from monitoring instrument health and scientific quality of the data, tracking progress of the surveys, to preparing for community observing campaigns and data releases. The role's additional duties involve supporting computational infrastructure, coordinating with wider spectroscopic project teams and external science users, contributing to documentation and user manuals, and collaborating on research programs to optimise data interpretation and usage. There are also opportunities to participate in data analysis science under CASU's broader astronomical and medical programmes.

https://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/47573/