Key Tasks and Responsibilities              

 As part of the Ground System Definition & Verification Office, the postholder will provide support to Earth Observation Projects in the End-to-end (E2E) Mission Performance domain covering both software and algorithm aspects.  

You will have the following responsibilities:

• Contribute to all aspects (project internal activities, monitoring/review of the relevant industrial activities, interaction with Mission Users and Scientists) relevant to the mission performance of the mission up to Level 2.
• Maintenance of mission and system level requirements, monitoring and critically analysing the requirement allocation, their flow down to the relevant contributors, the associated margins, their evolution and their verification, in the following areas:
• Observation requirements and mission data products requirements;
• End-to-End simulator and Ground Processor Prototype (GPP);
• Internal and External characterisation and calibration of the instrument;
• Support the payload team for aspects relevant to instrument performance requirements flow-down and instrument performance verification, including relevant models and tools;
•  Follow up the End to End Simulator and GPP procurement, verification/validation and acceptance activities; Acquire working knowledge of the tools for test data generation purposes and internal mission level verification activities; Develop and maintain additional mission performance mathematical models and tools to support the assessment of the relevant industrial development activities;
• Maintain mission level performance and error budgets, and analyse their compliance with the end-to-end mission performance requirements and propose corrective actions in case of deviation;
• •    Monitor and review the definition and implementation of the characterisation, calibration and validation plans and follow up the specification, procurement and verification/validation of the relevant equipment and activities;
• Support the preparation, execution and analysis of the relevant in-flight CAL/VAL operations during the commissioning phase;
• Support Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS) development for what concern the Ground processor aspects and cross-verification activities of the PDGS operational ground processor against the GPP;
• Support the running of the  Mission Advisory Group (MAG) for what concerns mission & instrument performance aspects, including end-to-end mission performance verification and compliance status;
• Interact with the Mission Users Community and Scientific Community for what concerns Mission definition, Products definition and mission & instrument performance aspects.
• Support the System and Engineering Manager and the other project team members in all aspects related to mission performance, asnecessary for the effective execution of the project.
• The Mission Performance Engineer will cooperate closely with the
• Instrument team in the execution of the relevant tasks. Furthermore she/he will be supported by and is expected to closely cooperate with specialist engineers from the  team, from the Earth Observation Projects Department and from the Directorate of Technical and Quality Management (D/TEC) as appropriate.

Skills & Experience

You will have the following qualifications and relevant experience:

• Master’s degree or equivalent qualification in a relevant physical science or engineering subject;
• The applicants shall have demonstrated experience in performance assessment of optical instrumentation for atmospheric observation including image processing;
• Experience working with Earth limb observation systems as well as knowledge of aerosols and ozone observational data are assets;
• The candidate shall demonstrate to be proficient with programming languages relevant to the implementation and maintenance of the system performance models (e.g. MATLAB and python);
• The candidate shall possess solid analytical skills together with broad, system-oriented thinking, and the ability and motivation to rapidly learn and switch within a wide range of application domains;
• The candidate shall have the capability to critically analyse the work performed by industry in the relevant areas, identify problems and propose corrective actions;
• Fluency in English is mandatory; knowledge of another European language is an advantage.

This job is located in Noordwijk.

If you think you have what it takes for this job, please send your CV (in English and in Word or PDF) by clicking on the button “Apply for this job” quoting job NL-HP-24082.

An exciting and dynamic international working environment awaits you!