Jobs

We need volunteers! Join our ever-growing team of Part-Time Scientists! Currently, we’re looking for:

Piping Engineer for fluid and propulsion systems

We  are  seeking  an  experienced  piping  engineer  for  the  design  and  development  of  our  Lander  and  to   coordinate  with  our  partners.

Responsibilities

• Create standards-­based piping and instrumentation diagrams
• Plan 3D layout  of  piping,  including  all  components  (vents,  etc)
• Create  specifications  of  and  select  piping  materials,  pumps,  vents,  etc
• Coordinate  interfaces  with  partner  technologies
• Assist  with  project  documentation
• Supervise  and  coordinate  external  engineering  efforts
• Report  to  engineering  and  project  lead

Your qualifications

• Relevant  engineering  degree  and  several  years’  work  experience
• Experience  in  planning  fluid  or  propulsion  piping  systems
• Familiarity  with  manufacturing  and  construction
• Familiarity  with  relevant  regulations  and  standards  (EN,  ASME,  DIN  etc.)
• Proficient  in  MS-­Office  and  CAD  software,  specifically  piping  layout  planning  software
• Strong  initiative  and  the  ability  to  work  in  a  team
• Effective  verbal  and  written  communication  in  English  and  German

We  offer

• Interesting  and  diverse  assignments  in  an  engaged  and  ambitious  team
• Technical  and  personal  development  opportunities
• Share  of  prize  money  proportional  to  performance  and  contribution

Rover programmer and tester(s)

• excellent experience in C++
• soft-real time code
• working in a team

C++ programmer able to write soft-real time code for a rover. This is a Jack-of-All-Trades position with a chance to work on communication, hardware interface, and AI modules. Work with a team of other developers. Work with QA to ensure a broad range of tests can and do get done on the code.

Control algorithm C++ programmer(s)

• excellent experience in C++
• hard real time C++ code
• working in a team

C++ programmer able to convert control algorithms into hard real time C++ code. Interface with the Aerospace team to convert their landing and midcourse correction algorithms into code for our embedded system running QNX. Work with simulation writers to test your code. Work with the Embedded team to read imaging, laser ranging, and other sensors. Do it all without floating point hardware, memory leaks, or buffer overruns and with 100% matching behavior to Simulink models used to model the mission.

Physics simulation programmer(s)

• good experience in C++ preferred
• ability to do physics on a GPU is a major plus
• working in a team

Create a variety of simulations including real-time simulated landings, simulated lunar images for use in testing video algorithms, and lunar soil and rover wheel interaction models. C++ is ideal as it lets other team members review your work, but other simulation languages will be considered. Use TCP/IP sockets to communicate with monitoring systems and with the software/hardware under test. Ability to visualize results, both in 3D glory, and in engineering charts is a plus. Ability to do physics on a GPU is a major benefit.

Visualization Engineer(s)

Do you love a good graph? Is there something magical when data is displayed just so? Do you believe that such things can be fully automated? Help us design ground-based software for our control room, simulations, and general conveyance of technical data. Who doesn’t want a great control room experience, one that makes jaws drop? More than that, we need the technical data coming from our simulations to be both accurate and accessible, believing that we lower mission risk by engaging more people to study the rover and lander behaviors. Work closely with the simulation writers, QA, software developers, and core management on this high-visibility programming job.

Code QA programmer(s)

• excellent experience in C++
• working in a team

Review C++ code you didn’t write. Write test cases for it after it was written and ideally before new code gets written. Work with developers to elicit the expected behavior from their modules and capture that in an executable, repeatable test case. Work with simulations to check the modules at many levels. Work with the QA team to ensure all test cases match requirements and vice versa. Apply fuzzing techniques and statistical models to check the codes behavior. Develop general robustness tests.

C++ Optimizer

• excellent experience in C++
• working in a team

Can you look at 5000 lines of C++ code and spot the 12 lines that can be removed without breaking anything? Work with developers to create safe coding practices that also perform very well. Work with QA to ensure the final product is in fact faster and smaller while still meeting all requirements and passing all robustness tests. There isn’t much for you to do right away, but you’ll be very busy in 2012.

Data Storage and Streaming Programmer(s)

• experience in C++
• knowledge in standard network protocols
• work in a team

Use C++ to safe guard each and every one of our packets to and from the moon. Store them safely in real time. Pull them back quickly if we need to review video. Feed these packets over TCP/IP to many, many hungry applications trying to connect us to our rover. Use existing standards for packet formats. Help define any needed internal standards for custom applications accessing the packet stream. Secure the stream against theft and packet injection.

GPU Data Reconstruction Programmer(s)

• experience in C++ and CUDA on NVidia Tesla cards
• Knowledge of JPEG decoding, Monte Carlo optimization and linear algebra
• work in a team

Use C++ and CUDA on NVidia Tesla cards to reconstruct fragmented stereoscopic images. Used if we have communication issues, these tools generate mission-usable images from a stream of partial frames and telemetry data. Knowledge of JPEG decoding, Monte Carlo optimization, linear algebra, and maybe even Compressed Sensing are useful.

Data compression programmer(s)

• work in a team

Can you take this whole job description and represent it as 4 bits in N dimensional space? If so, you already know we need you to write image and data compression and decompression algorithms for the worst-case scenario of an extreme communication outage. The code will fly but we’re all working hard so it’ll never have to run.

Web developer

• experience in PHP, (X)HTML, CSS & Javascript
• knowledge in working with Drupal is a must
• MySQL and other web-related skills desirable

Amateur radio specialist

• experience with the 3cm/10Ghz band
• required band licenses (optional)
• microwave experience (optional)

PCB designer/embedded hardware developer

• skills to design an FPGA based PCB
• experience in high-frequency applications