Research Scientist/Systems Engineer
Greenbelt, MD

Job Description

Research Scientist/Systems Engineer

NESDIS and the National Weather Service (NWS) are both committed to fully exploiting the National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) and Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) satellites as they become operational over the next several years. Specifically, NPP launched in 2011 while the two JPSS satellites are scheduled to be launch ready in 2016 for JPSS-1 and 2021 for JPSS-2. Operational products are expected to flow into NWS systems approximately 6 to 18 months after those launches. These systems represent a substantial taxpayer investment and will form a critical observational capability for NWS Public Warning and Forecasting Services. There is a substantial development effort currently underway to build and launch these satellites and generate products within the NASA and NOAA Acquisition communities. However, there are not adequate resources within the user community in NWS to define and plan to optimally exploit this data from the product delivery point, through the NWS IT infrastructure, to the end users at Centers and Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs).

This position will assist in the definition, implementation, and maintenance of NWS plans and timelines related to NDE and JPSS schedules for the testing and fielding of data products and product delivery systems. Specifically, this position is focused on products used at Weather Forecast Offices and Centers that are not specifically part of the effort to ingest the observation to initialize models. This position will also assist the NJO and JPSS Program Scientist in product development analysis.

Skills

The skill set required for performing the activities are:

(1) The ability to perform independently given the overall task assignment.

(2) The ability to perform independent analysis with the requisite computer skills ( e.g. IDL, Mcidas-V, Python, C++, netcdf, grib2). These skills are needed to support modeling and simulation analysis and will also enable technical dialogues with NWS.

(3) The ability to communicate effectively and in a politically sensitive nature.