You will be assigned as Archive Scientist for ESA heliophysics missions under the direct responsibility of the Head of the Science Archives Development and Operations Section, also known as the ESAC Science Data Centre (ESDC), in the Data Science and Archives Division within SCI-S. You will have further functional reporting lines within the mission(s) you support.

Duties

You will be responsible for the definition and specification of the scientific archive for the supported ESA heliophysics missions and for the follow-up and monitoring of its implementation and operation with the goal of maximising the scientific return of the missions. You will work in close collaboration with the heliophysics mission project scientists, the other mission archives scientists, the ESDC Software and Data Systems Architect and the members of the Heliophysics Archives Users’ Group.

As Archive Scientist, your specific responsibilities will include: 
 

• ownership of use cases and drivers for the mission archives, including:
  • interfacing with the Project Scientist, the Science Operations Centre (SOC) team, other archive science leads and other archive scientists, as well as the external stakeholders, such as the instrument teams and the mission scientific community, to provide the science use cases that drive the mission archive and determine the priorities for implementation;
  • providing scientific support and steering the development and operations of the archives for the supported ESA heliophysics missions, providing the ESDC development team with an archive user requirements document as a baseline for implementation;
• monitoring the implementation, testing and expected performance of the archive based on use cases gathered by the mission team and derived requirements; in particular, defining and performing the end user acceptance testing of the different archive versions prior to their release to the scientific community;
• with the help of the instrument operations scientists, supervising and coordinating the definition and provision of science data products and any higher-level data products from the community or instrument teams as needed, including liaising on submission schedules and content;
• liaising with any internal and external providers to ensure the completeness of all levels of data products with maximum science quality, contributing to the optimisation and refinement of the archive products when possible;
• encouraging and contributing to the science exploitation of the missions’ data products through archive usage;
• participating in archive scientist meetings and user groups and sharing ideas and proposals for the strategy and promotion of the ESA science archives;
• supporting the scientific community on archive- and data product-related questions.

As a scientist in the Department, you will be required to actively pursue personal scientific research, publishing articles using archival data, and to actively participate in the Department’s research activities.