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| Square Kilometre Array Regional Centre Scientist | Closing date: 2019-04-18
Contact: Human Resources |
Reference: RCS/19
Reports To: SKA Regional Centre Project Scientist
Contact type: Fixed term contract to June 2022
Location: Jodrell Bank, Cheshire, UK
How to apply: Please send
- a cover letter summarising how your skills, experience and knowledge meet each of the mandatory and desirable qualifications, experience and knowledge criteria as listed in the job description above;
- a CV;
- details of your current remuneration package and notice period,
- to jobs@skatelescope.org, quoting reference RCS/19. | | ▸ more | Organisation and Project Background
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a global project to build a multi-purpose radio telescope that will play a major role in answering key questions in modern astrophysics and cosmology.
Twelve governments are now participating in the project, with others engaged in discussions regarding possible membership. Facilities for the new telescope will be located in South Africa and Australia, with our headquarters in a purpose-built building at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire, UK. SKA HQ currently houses around 80 staff but has just undergone a major expansion to accommodate up to 150 staff as the project moves towards construction and operation of the SKA telescopes.
Negotiations between the governments of SKA member countries to establish the SKA Observatory as an Inter-Governmental Organisation (IGO) have recently concluded with the IGO due to be established in 2020.
The Role
The first phase of the SKA is due to begin construction soon after the IGO is formed in 2020, and become fully operational in 2027. The operation of the SKA Observatory is currently being planned, and Science Working Groups from across the SKA community are developing the future science programme for the Observatory.
The SKA telescopes will generate unprecedented amounts of data, both in terms of total annual rates and in terms of the size of individual data products. The Observatory will produce calibrated data products but these will need further analysis or processing to be fully science-ready. Users will interact with these data sets via SKA Regional Centres (SRCs), which we anticipate will be part of a global network of facilities providing data storage, archive services and processing capabilities. These SRCs will require a collaboration of regional initiatives in order to function as a coherent network providing access to scientists across the world.
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) has just been established and will very likely provide the framework within which a European SRC will function. The ESCAPE project (European Science Cluster of Astronomy and Particle physics ESFRI research Infrastructures) has just been funded to ?16M as part of the Horizon 2020 (H2020) EC funding cycle, and will run until June 2022 with the goal of defining and implementing the EOSC, and enabling the principles of open science, in the fields of astronomy and particle physics.
The role of the SKA Organization within the ESCAPE project is to work with international collaborators to develop prototypes of SRCs for distributed storage and computing, and for the provision of a science platform that will enable users to develop and deploy pipelines for use with SKA-scale data sets across a network of computing and storage infrastructures.
We are looking for motivated individuals to join our group to conduct and document prototyping work on the concepts of federated data storage and distributed workflow management ? specifically seeking to understand three areas:
1. how Exabyte-scale archives including very large volume data objects might function effectively and scalably across the globe,
2. how computations requiring significant HPC time at distributed facilities could be managed, and,
3. how individual science users develop workflows collaboratively for deployment in this distributed environment.
These prototyping and development activities will be part of work in the ESCAPE project, which will entail strong collaboration with partners across several institutes but especially with CERN, in Geneva, and ASTRON, in the Netherlands.
You will join SKA Organisation?s Operations group, and work with a team from across the Operations and Software and Computing groups. In addition to the ESCAPE work, you will have the opportunity to support the SKA?s other SRC related work by assisting in developing technical data challenges around distributed storage and related areas to ensure that the work done within the ESCAPE project is put into the global context.
Key Duties, Accountabilities and Responsibilities
Under guidance from their SKAO line manager the post holders will:
- Help develop, test, optimise and maintain a prototype SKA data lake (as a pre-cursor to a network of SRCs) using scientific data management tools.
- Liaise with members of the SKA Science Working Groups to determine the data storage Quality of Service requirements for the various SKA science projects
- Be part of a team developing a Science Gateway for SKA as a framework for collaborations of science users to write and deploy workflows for use on remotely linked HPC centres.
- Attend frequent meetings to develop the ESCAPE work and report progress internally to SKAO and by writing high quality documents as deliverables for the ESCAPE project.
Mandatory Qualifications, Experience and Knowledge:
- A PhD or equivalent, in Astronomy, Physics, Computer Science or a closely related field or equivalent experience in a professional scientific computing capacity.
- Significant experience with, and understanding of either or both
*distributed scientific data management tools (e.g. rucio).
*distributed computation frameworks (e.g. workload management and containerisation) in the Physical sciences.
- Good python programming background, including the use of Jupyter notebooks
- Ability to manage workload and targets in a dynamic and collaborative environment.
- A flexible, adaptable team player, able to work to deadlines.
- Good spoken and written English.
Desirable Qualifications, Experience and Knowledge:
- Familiarity with astronomical analysis techniques
- Proven ability to document results to a high standard
- Ability to work with remote collaborators
- Expertise in Software Programming in collaborative environments
For more information on the SKA project visit http://www.skatelescope.org.
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