Software Engineer Dorking, England
Job description
About us
An exciting opportunity has arisen for a highly motivated, talented Software Engineer to join the SMILE project at the Department of Space and Climate Physics (Mullard Space Science Laboratory - MSSL) of University College London (UCL).
The post holder will be a member of the MSSL SMILE team. SMILE (Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) is a joint mission of the European Space Agency and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) that will study the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth’s magnetosphere. In early 2025 the mission will take into space four instruments, two of them being imagers, the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) and the UV Imager (UVI), and two measuring the conditions of the particles and magnetic field in situ in the Earth’s magnetosheath and in the solar wind. SXI will take X-ray images of the dayside magnetosphere with the purpose of studying its response to solar wind variations in a totally new way. The European co-leader of the SMILE mission is based at MSSL. The Laboratory is responsible for the design and build of the SXI Front End Electronics which controls the operations of the imaging Charge Couple Devices and retrieves the X-ray signals that are downlinked and turned into X-ray images on the ground.
The Department is located on its own campus in the beautiful Surrey Hills, surrounded by woodland, and is the UK's largest university space research group. Space science is a discipline that demands highly innovative technologies and the Department has an international reputation for excellence in this area. UCL was one of the first universities in the world to become involved in making scientific observations in space. Since the Department was established in 1966, it has participated in over 40 satellite missions with the European Space Agency, NASA (US), Japan, Russia, China and India, and flown over 230 rocket experiments. The Department is family friendly and applications would be welcome from applicants seeking hybrid work opportunities (i.e. a mixture of in person, at least 40% of the time, and remote). The Department has been awarded the Institute of Physics Juno Practitioner. The aim of Project Juno is to recognise and reward physics departments, schools, institutes and organisations that can demonstrate they have taken action to address gender equality in physics and to encourage better practice for all staff.
The post is offered for 18 months in the first instance, with the possibility of further extension during the operational phase of the SMILE mission. We are offering a salary range of £39,508 to £41,586 (including London Allowance of £4,200 per annum).
About the role
The post holder will work within the SMILE project with the support of the Software Engineering Group, which designs, develops and delivers software to support scientific space projects. The purpose of the job is to develop software for the production and archive of SXI data products.
In general, the final level products of an X-ray astrophysical observatory are calibrated lists where each entry corresponds to the detection of a single photon or photon-like particle-induced signal by the X-ray detector. Additional products such as images and spectra can be derived from these lists and are eventually stored in an archive. Such products are described as Level 3 (L3) with L0 to L2 being earlier stages in the processing chain from the raw telemetry (L0). The ultimate primary science goals of the SMILE SXI are measurements of the position of portions of the Earth’s magnetopause, magnetosheath and/or cusps which can be inferred from the X-ray images. Deriving these measurements (called Level 4, or L4, products) is not a trivial task and will require an advanced set of tools to produce a credible output. The SXI project intends to support the production of L4 data products which will be part of the SMILE SXI archive located at ESAC, near Madrid. An ‘L4 consortium’ has been established, comprising UK, US, France institutions and CAS, and supported by the SMILE Modelling Working Group, with the objective of developing the techniques and processes necessary to derive and incorporate in the SMILE archive the SXI L4 products.
Various methods have been explored to extract the parameters of interest from the SXI images, ranging from their direct interpretation to the so-called forward modelling, whereby an empirical model of the 3-D X-ray emission is passed through the instrument response and compared with simulated datasets derived from MHD, also passed through the instrument response, the latter representing the type of datasets SXI will produce in orbit. Optimisation routines are used to find the parameters of the empirical model by minimising statistical goodness of fit parameters e.g. via a chi-square test.
The post holder will contribute to the development and testing of the codes used to derive the L4 products, to the products validation and their injection into the archive. This will be tested on MHD simulated data pre-launch and applied to the SXI data retrieved during the operational phase of the mission. The post holder is also expected to provide support to the scientific community that will make use of the SXI L4 products, by organising training workshops and running a helpdesk.
For informal enquiries please email Professor Graziella Branduardi-Raymont ([email protected]).
About you
The successful candidate is expected to hold a University degree, in a numerical science subject or have equivalent experience. The postholder is required to have experience and expertise in software engineering along with knowledge of a software engineering lifecycle. A working knowledge of two or more of the following: Python, IDL, C++ and a demonstrated grasp of issues involving the development and validation of new algorithms for processing data from scientific instruments would be essential for this post.
What we offer
- As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents we also offer some great benefits some of which are below:
- 41 Days holiday (including 27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days)
- Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE)
- Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
- On-Site open aired swimming pool
- Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay
- Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service
- Discounted medical insurance
Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
As London’s Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world’s talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong.
We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL’s workforce.
These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; LGBTQI+ people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women.
You can read more about our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion here : https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equality-diversity-inclusion/
