Scientific Programmer/Analyst

Science Systems and Applications, Inc. (SSAI) seeks a talented and goal-oriented individual to join our team supporting NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The selected candidate will work closely with contractor and NASA scientists to provide scientific programming support for a complex earth system model and its products including weather analyses and forecasts, constituent analyses and forecasts, reanalyses, and other gridded datasets. The effort also includes data assimilation and forecast operations, algorithm and workflow development, data processing, scientific analysis, data validation, data management, and documentation support.  This position is located onsite at NASA GSFC.

Duties include, but are not limited to:

• Maintaining and enhancing quality assurance applications
• Designing and implementing novel statistical methods used to validate GEOS data
• Curating observational and statistical data used in experimental workflows
• Collaborating with partner organizations on joint software projects, e.g. next-generation database software packages
• Interfacing with the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) supercomputing facility, which manages web servers and database systems
• Provide necessary documentation and updates when necessary to stay abreast in the current technological industry and climate
• Support Python development efforts with Earth System Modeling groups at NASA GSFC by providing guidance and answering questions

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• B.S. degree, or equivalent, in atmospheric science, oceanography or other physical science, mathematics, statistics, or computational science, plus 2 or more years of experience in scientific programming
• Experience using Unix/Linux 
• Strong Python programming skills
• Demonstrated availability to work well in a team environment
• Solid communication skills, both oral and written
• US Permanent Residency or US Citizenship required.

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience working on NCCS Discover HPC specifically, or Linux-based HPC in general
• Experience working with NetCDF files
• Experience managing and interacting with SQL databases
• Familiarity with data assimilation, especially in the context of atmospheric or ocean models.
• Familiarity with remote sensing observations, especially for meteorology or physical oceanography

• Experience with Python Data Visualization Libraries like Bokeh, Matplotlib, etc.
• Experience with high performance computing environments
• Proven ability to quickly master new programming languages
• Experience with software engineering and programming with C++, Java, Bash, HTML, Javascript, CSS, as well as parallel processing using Python, MPI, and OpenMP
• Experience using directed acyclic graph (DAG)-based workflow engines (especially Cylc, or related alternatives, like Airflow, Argo, Luigi, etc.) and SLURM workload manager
• Experience with full-stack application development using tools like Flask and Django
• Knowledge of an Earth science discipline 

EOE, including disability/vets

Physical Requirements:  While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to stand, walk, and use hands to touch, handle or feel objects, tools or controls. The employee frequently is required to talk and hear and occasionally required to reach with hands and arms and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. Must regularly lift and/or move up to 10 pounds, and occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and the ability to adjust focus.