Software developer, database

CEA Paris-Saclay is a government research centre located 25km south of Paris, France. The Astrophysics Department is a major space astrophysics laboratory of more than 100 faculty and staff with interests ranging from planets to cosmology. The astrophysics department seeks a software developer to join a team of astronomers working on the European Research Council-funded M2C project. The multi-national team uses the largest objects in the Universe, galaxy clusters, to test the current cosmological model for structure formation. A major part of this project seeks to build a database of galaxy clusters detected and studied across the electromagnetic spectrum (X-rays, microwave, optical) with a variety of space- and ground-based telescopes.

The contract is for 18 months and the salary will depend on the level of previous professional experience.

The candidate will be responsible for designing and building the database itself as well as interfaces that will allow project members to maintain the database contents. The candidate will be encouraged to interact with the M2C project members in order to learn more about the data and to find ways to optimise the tools. Additional travel funds will also be available to visit international project partners.

Specific objectives are: to build a database of clusters of galaxies and the rich set of additional data from ground and space- based observatories; to design an internal interface for project members to add/remove database entries; to design an external interface for public access to database contents.

The candidate will have good knowledge in software development, Python language and SQL-like database design. The candidate should have previous experience in software development project management, source code versioning management tools (Git/Mercurial) and IDEs (Eclipse, PyCharm, etc.). Previous experience in web application developement, particularly with the Django framework, and GUI application development, particularly with the Qt4/Qt5 GUI library, would be a plus but are not a requirement.

The candidate should be organised and capable of meeting project deadlines. Good teamwork skills, positivity, adaptability and professionalism are also expected.

Applicants should provide a CV, a one page motivation letter describing previous experience in database development, and at least 2 references. The deadline for applications is June 30th, 2018; applications will be reviewed continuously until the position is filled.