Institute of Astronomy

Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available until 31 October 2027 in the first instance.

This is an interesting opportunity for a data scientist to work at the Institute of Astronomy (IoA), University of Cambridge, as part of the Gaia and PLATO system development teams within the IoA Data Projects (CamCEAD) group.

Gaia is a space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 2013, and with data releases in Dec 2026 and a final data release in 2030. Gaia's key objective is a detailed study of the Milky Way that is revealing our Galaxy's content, dynamics, current state and formation history. The IoA is responsible for the development and operation of the (spectro)-photometric processing system.

PLATO is an ESA mission, launching end 2026, that will detect and characterise a significant sample of exoplanets around bright stars. Within the PLATO Consortium, the IoA team is responsible for the development and operation of the Exoplanet Analysis System, which will enable the detection of the signatures of exoplanets from high-precision photometric light curves of the host stars.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/data-validation-scientist-fixed-term-lg46896