Chief Engineer

Chief Engineer (012285)

Job Title: Chief Engineer

Number of Openings:1

Job Type (Employment Type): Direct Hire

Country:United States

State/Province:Maryland

City:Greenbelt

Salary Interval:Per Year

Contract: OMES

Job Category: Engineering

Career Level:Senior (non-manager)

Level of Education:Four-Year Degree

Years of Experience:15

Position Description

The JPSS program provides Earth observing satellites and a ground system to control/monitor these satellites and to receive/process the data from these satellites into Earth science products. These products are used for many objectives including hurricane tracking, weather, climate modeling, ozone hole monitoring, and fire detection.

The JPSS program is developing JPSS satellites (JPSS-1, 2, 3, and 4) and provides commanding and telemetry monitoring for S-NPP and the JPSS satellites. Each of the S-NPP and JPSS satellites have 5 instruments including VIIRS (optical instrument using infrared (IR) and visible bands), CrIS (sounder instrument using IR bands), ATMS (a microwave based sounder), OMPS (uses detection of reflected UV light to determine ozone hole size and strength), and CERES/RBI (uses IR to measure total radiated energy given off by the earth both during the day and night)

In addition JPSS satellites, the JPSS ground system supports several additional Earth sciences missions. The primary missions are S-NPP and JPSS-1, but the ground system also provides data collection and routing over its worldwide WAN for G-COM, Coreolis/Windsat, DMSP, and MetOp. The ground system uses is four polar ground stations to receive approximately 100 Gbytes per day of science data from 5 sensors on each of the S-NPP and JPSS satellites, and the ground system produces approximately 4 to 5 Tbytes of science products each day from that data. The challenges of this ground system include supporting scheduling and data delivery for multiple missions, using extensive redundancy to provide high ground system availability, supporting JPSS launches and activation concurrently with S-NPP operations, and meeting NIST security requirements while doing all of the above.

This is a senior system engineering position that should have strong background in both satellite/instrument development as well as large NASA ground system development. Specific responsibilities are provided below.

Program Level Support

Develop mission and multi-mission level ConOps and performance specifications.

Develop program key performance requirements (e.g. data latency and data availability) using analytical models and knowledge of the space and ground systems.

Monitor the performance of the satellite, instrument, and ground system development and testing. Analyze the impact of delays and determine mitigation strategies to minimize impact on observatory launches and on the overall mission(s).

Lead mission level test activities

Work to resolve mission affecting conflicts between the ground project, the flight project, and mission partners.

Spacecraft/Instrument Development

Ensure that instrument performance is consistent with the needs of the science community

Assess ops concepts for multi-mission support and availability of space and ground network resources to support the ops concepts.

Assess impact of changes in the spacecraft bus or the instruments on ground system T&C and science data processing, and work with both the flight project and ground project to resolve issues.

Ground System Development

Assess the ground system implementation's ability to meet key performance requirements and ConOps objectives, identify discrepancies, and work to resolve issues.

Assess impact of security requirements and implementation approach on the ground system performance, ability to meet cost/schedule targets, and on operational effectiveness. If issues arise, then work with the ground system and security to develop approaches that will address these issues.

Assess ability of JPSS networks to meet throughput and latency requirements, and resolve issues as they arise.

Provide leadership for JPSS Ground System testing. This includes leadership in preparing to execute the JPSS Ground System level testing.

Other

Lead problem resolution boards and capture actions and decisions made during these boards.

Resolve other issues such as compatibility of system upgrades with existing mission partner systems.

Position Requirements

Applicants should have at least 15 years of experience that addresses each of the following areas:

Experience with Earth science ground systems and satellites

Development of spacecraft and instruments.

Spacecraft command and telemetry analysis

Large systems test experience with extensive use of networking, virtual machines, and NIST compliant security systems.

Experience with worldwide WANs and data throughput over secure networks

Experience with multi-mission ground stations and RF interference from multiple satellites

Experience with Earth science data processing and data distribution including quality assessment of Earth Science Products.

EOE M/F/V

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