Observatory Software Quality Assurance Engineer

Background
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project has been established to design, build and eventually operate an Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) with a primary mirror diameter of 30 meters. ELT’s will be the successors of the present day 8-10 meter world class telescopes. When complete TMT will be the largest ground based optical/infrared telescope in the northern hemisphere providing the capability to study exciting astronomical problems from the nature of extra-solar planets to the first stars in the universe. An international collaboration consisting of the University of California, the California Institute of Technology, Canada, Japan, India, and China has been formed to deliver this exciting project.

The Observatory Software (OSW) effort provides a wide range of critical configuration-controlled software for observatory operations, including science operations support software and the software infrastructure that integrates and controls all telescope and instrument systems. Science operations software includes proposal and observation planning tools, observation execution and visualization software, data handling and management, and telescope-control and instrument-observing user interfaces. The software infrastructure includes the common operations software shared across all systems and the development of all observation execution sequences.

Job Summary
The Observatory Software (OSW) Quality Assurance Engineer will be a key member of the OSW team and will report to the OSW Project Manager. The TMT Project Office is located in Pasadena, California and the location for this position is the TMT Project Office. The development of OSW software is shared between the Project Office, the India partner institutions, and India-based software vendors. Travel is expected as part of this position including trips to India during construction, and the observatory site during the integration and commissioning phase of the project. Software QA activities are performed in different phases across the integrated OSW team in the India vendor, the India coordination center and the Project Office. This position is in charge of the Project Office QA activities and the coordination between these 3 locations.

Job Duties
The following is a list of job duties, qualifications and skills for the OSW Quality Assurance Engineer.

• Work with the distributed OSW team to monitor the technical progress of the OSW software.
• Attend regular weekly meetings with the OSW software vendor to discuss progress and technical issues.
• Lead the quality assurance of delivered software by executing, reviewing, and analyzing software tests. Occasional test writing and rewriting is expected.
• Lead the configuration management of the delivered software, working closely with the TMT Systems Engineering group to apply the project standard process.
• Become a technical expert in the OSW languages, testing tools, libraries, and quality assurance approach.
• Works closely with the TMT Systems Engineering group to ensure that TMT system requirements are properly flowed down to the OSW subsystems.
• Coordinate with the QA and System Safety group to ensure that TMT quality and safety process are followed.
• Responsible for TMT System Engineering review process documents related to software requirements compliance, traceability, verification and validation.
• Use your existing knowledge of software quality assurance and testing to recommend improvements to the testing approach and process.
• Work to streamline and automate the quality assurance process to generate required systems engineering documents.
• Work with and support managers of work packages that include software to ensure successful delivery and integration of all software into one TMT system.
• Work with the India-based team to increase their understanding of software testing.
• Use your experience with agile development to help support the TMT agile-based software development process across the observatory.
• Work with and support the staff of the TMT Software Test and Integration Laboratory in the acceptance, testing, and integration of software from the TMT project partners.
• Provide some coding as needed to support the tasks of the project office OSW effort.
• Participate in OSW design work, reviews, and other project assignments as needed.

Required Qualifications and Skills

• A degree in a scientific, computer science or a related engineering discipline. An advanced degree is preferred.
• A track record of successful experience with software testing on large software projects.
• Significant experience with tools for automated software testing, continuous integration, agile development support, and software quality assurance for languages such as Scala and Java.
• A minimum of 5 years of experience with software development and testing including all aspects of the software lifecycle: design, code, test, verification, integration, and maintenance.
• Demonstrated use of “soft skills” such as interpersonal and communication skills and a strong sense of team spirit.
• Demonstrated ability to generate clear and concise technical documents and presentations.
• Technical knowledge and experience with one or more TMT tools including: Linux, Scala/Java, Akka, Jira, and browser-based user interfaces.
• Self-motivated and capable to perform and deliver with minimal direction.
• Ability to travel to and spend time in India working with the OSW team and software vendor.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Excellent organizational skills
• Good interpersonal skills
• The ability to write clear and concise technical documents
• A cooperative team-player who strives to make the team successful
• Practical problem solving skills

Desired Qualifications and Skills

• Experience working with internationally distributed technical teams.
• Experience with software outsourcing in India.
• An understanding of System's Engineering concepts
• Experience with telescopes and observatory operations