Vacancy Notice: ALMA Regional Centre Astronomer

Published: 07 Nov 2022
Men in red walk away from ALMA

For its ALMA Regional Centre at the Headquarters in Garching near Munich, Germany, ESO is opening the position of:

ALMA Regional Centre Astronomer

The closing date for receipt of applications to be considered for the position is 10 January, 2023. For more information, please see the full vacancy announcement on the ESO Recruitment Portal website.

The ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) department at ESO provides the interface between the European ALMA Users Community and the ALMA observatory in Chile. Its mission is to achieve, promote, and provide high-caliber support to the ALMA user community and to ALMA Observatory global operations, including coordinated delivery of software. To provide quality-assured, high-quality data products for PIs and archive users, within target time-windows. To facilitate ALMA science performed by expert and non-expert users alike via coordination of user support.

The ARC is looking for an astronomer with a strong research profile in radio and/or millimetre astronomy. The candidate should demonstrate scientific drive and vision to conduct high-impact independent research. Furthermore, they should have a strong interest in maximising ALMA's scientific output by leading operations support and user support tasks. As the ARC astronomer they will contribute to core ARC duties, in particular quality assurance, in coordination with colleagues at the ESO ARC, the European ARC network and the other ALMA partners, as well as to tasks leading to the optimisation of science operations. Expertise areas that are currently under-represented among the ESO faculty are encouraged. For an overview of the science expertise in Garching see here (https://www.eso.org/sci/activities/garching.html).

Main Duties and Responsibilities:

  • Play a key role in the ALMA processes targeting the optimisation of the scientific products that come out of this world-leading facility; this task includes, but is not limited to, co-managing both manual and pipeline data reduction runs, overseeing reprocessing efforts and contributing to the pipeline weblog review process and its optimisation;
  • Perform general ARC duties, including answering Helpdesk tickets, contributing to testing of tools and playing a proactive role in the improvement of user documentation;
  • Undertaking Astronomer-on-Duty shifts in Chile;
  • Constructively work together with other ARC staff and ALMA operations staff around the globe;
  • As a member of the ESO Astronomy Faculty, the successful candidate will be expected and encouraged to conduct a strong personal research programme and to participate actively in the scientific life of ESO and interact with other parts of the wider organisation;
  • The tasks are not limited to the above and a flexible approach and willingness and capability to adapt is required.

For more information, please see the full vacancy announcement on the ESO Recruitment Portal website.

Contact:
Email: vacancy@eso.org