Chief Engineer

Title: Chief Engineer

Location: Baltimore United States

Full-Time

Hybrid

Job Description:

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), is NASA's science operations center for missions including the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. STScI leads observation planning, data analysis, public engagement, and data archiving for flagship missions. Our staff spans astronomy, engineering, education, IT, communications, and administration-working together to bring space science to the world. STScI is hiring a Chief Engineer to support the Data Management Division (DMD). Our world-class astronomical research center is based on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus in Baltimore, Maryland.

This position requires US Citizenship or Permanent Residence to meet ITAR requirements.

The annual salary range for this senior level role is $155,000 - $180,000.

Position Overview

This position can support a hybrid work schedule from home and onsite. Candidates must reside in or be willing to relocate to our local market (MD, DE, VA, PA, DC & WV) and be able to work on-site when needed.

The Data Management Division (DMD) consists of more than 140 staff across 8 branches and is responsible for receiving, processing, calibrating, and distributing data from multiple space telescopes. DMD also manages the archiving of science data within the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) and provides data products and analysis tools to the astronomical community. These tools, products, and services play a critical role in making astronomical data accessible worldwide while advancing the state of astronomical archives, data systems, and scientific discovery.

The Chief Engineer delivers on the Institute's goals and strategies to ensure that technical solutions are to be implemented to meet the current and future needs of all STScI missions and projects. The Chief Engineer works with the Division Offices, Mission Offices, other Chief Engineers, Project Managers, Software Developers and Project Scientists to ensure that activities within their domain are based on sound engineering practices, and that they are compatible with each other and with available STScI resources.

Your Role and Responsibilities include:

You provide expert technical guidance and oversight for STScI activities and assets. This includes the following:

• You leverage current technology expertise and industry trend knowledge to implement and support the development/evolution of technology products and service roadmaps within the proposed schedules, resources, and long-term maintenance costs.
• You work with Chief Engineers in other Divisions and participate in cross-divisional coordinating teams toward Institute wide strategic objectives.
• You participate in the systems engineering and design phases and review all system designs and approve or reject them based on their alignment with the Institute's goals and strategies.
• You coordinate changes, recognize and mitigate risk to ensure implementation teams' successful completion of their work within scope, schedule, and cost.
• You support Mission Offices in addressing issues by providing options to adjust effort, scope, resources, and schedule across teams.
• You support building a strong trust-based relationship with development teams

Provide technical coordination of teams. This includes the following:

• You ensure and approve proposed technical solutions are feasible and support teams in their development of technical solutions.
• You work with managers and others to establish standards for systems in their domain and ensure that processes are in place to verify compliance.
• You enforce technical expectations for product development deliverables, by ensuring that overall quality standards are designed into products.

Partner with the Mission Offices in identifying, scoping and establishing new work, and support the Mission Offices as the work progresses.

• Lead technical cost estimation efforts for future business opportunities within their domain. Support the appropriate Mission Office or proposal lead in the development of information (technical or programmatic) needed to respond to these opportunities.
• Investigate technology advances and foster opportunities to incorporate innovative technical approaches where appropriate that improve the value of STScI products.
• Support the Mission Offices in responding to proposals and other requests by drafting schedules, estimating costs, developing work breakdowns, defining resource needs and work priorities as required.

Your Experience, Skills and Qualifications:

Education:

A degree in Engineering, or related scientific or technical field. Advanced degree preferred, however comparable experience may be substituted.

Minimum Qualifications:

Experience in definition, documentation, development, test and operation of large software systems, including coordinated engineering in a highly matrixed, multi-team environment.

Expert knowledge of:

• Cloud based and on-premises development, operations (DevOps), policy, governance and transitioning from on premises to cloud-based.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD, and automation technology.
• Tools, techniques, processes, and standards for developing software products and services.
• Software system design and development, integration and test, process, and project planning.
• Technology roadmap development including industry trend analysis
• High scale data engineering and data management architecture and infrastructure
• Proven management skills (collaboration, negotiating, teaming, and being able to work with a work force with a wide variety of skills)

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Linux and Windows computer operating systems
• Containers and container orchestration via Kubernetes
• Microservices architectures and data pipeline frameworks such as Airflow
• Modern data formats and query tools such as Iceberg and Trino
• Authentication/Authorization standards and services such as OAuth, OIDC, SAML, and Okta, AuthO, Congnito
• Distributed Version Control Systems such as GIT
• Analysis of system utilization and design for high performance and high availability
• Monitoring and alerting methodologies such as OpenTelemetry and Datadog
• Proven ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships both internally and externally (including NASA and the scientific community at-large).
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills can be utilized in technical writing and presentations.
• Proven ability to foster the professional development of their colleagues and demonstrated ability to nurture an engineering culture within their teams.
• A range of programming languages such as C, C++, Go, Java, Python, Ruby, etc.
• SQL and NoSQL database systems
• Budgeting and cost management
• Training and mentoring

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