Visiting Research Programmer (A0900063)

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has one Visiting Research Programmer position available. Responsibilities of this position involve designing and developing software required to process Dark Energy Camera data. These software tools are referred to as the Community Pipeline, which will be deployed and operated by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO) in Tucson. The Community Pipeline will share significant infrastructure with the DES data management system, a high performance computing enabled system under development since 2004 for the processing, archiving and serving of astronomical imaging and catalog data from the DES (http://desweb.cosmology.uiuc.edu). The DES is a DOE and NSF project to study the nature of dark energy or, equivalently, the underlying reason for the acceleration of the cosmic expansion. Survey operations at the telescope site in Chile and at NCSA begin in October 2011. The successful applicant will work with the DESDM Team resident at NCSA, in the Astronomy Department and at collaborating DES institutions around the world to complete the development and commission the Community Pipeline in time for operations.

Required Education and Experience:

• BA/BS degree in computer science, software engineering, astronomy or related field required (advanced degree preferred). Alternative degree fields will be considered/accepted if accompanied by equivalent experience (depending on nature and depth of experience as it relates to relevant NCSA technologies and projects).
• Two years related work experience.
• Extensive experience in Perl or similar scripting language.
• Working knowledge of C or C++ languages and of condor or similar workload management systems for application to a small cluster environment.
• Working knowledge of databases (Oracle and PostGreSQL preferred).

This is a visiting academic professional position (covered by a collective bargaining agreement) at NCSA and is a renewable 12-month, 100%-time appointment with regular University benefits (may become permanent at a later date). Salary is commensurate with experience and start date will be as soon as possible after the close date of the search. Interviews may be conducted before the closing date, although no hiring decisions will be made until after the search has closed.

For full consideration, Please create your candidate profile at http://jobs.illinois.edu and upload a letter of application, resume, and three letters of recommendation by the close date (9/22/09). All requested information must be submitted for your application to be considered.

For further information regarding our application procedures, you may visit http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu, contact NCSA at (217) 265-0618 or email career@ncsa.uiuc.edu.

The University of Illinois is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.