Remote Sensing Data Analyst

Science Systems and Applications Inc. (SSAI) is seeking a Remote Sensing Data Analyst for a soil moisture mapping project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.  The Data Analyst will compile, process, analyze, and validate soil moisture data.   The analyst will also prepare the data for public release and support the publication of research results.

Duties Include but no limited to:

• Support the GIS application of microwave remote sensing soil moisture data.
• Process, review, and analyze microwave remote sensing data from an airborne instrument.  This will be primarily passive microwave data but may also include some active microwave data sets.
• Locate, acquire, and process ancillary data sets to coordinate with the airborne instrument data.  This may include soil moisture data, local municipality land use data, satellite data, and GIS data sets.
• Independently make sound and scientifically informed decisions about what datasets to use.
• Produce plots and visualizations of data.
• Support the development of algorithms and execute those algorithms upon the remote sensing data.

• Example activities include: download raw instrument data from various sites; subset data spatially and temporally; generate images from the data; calculate instrument performance metrics; resample to different spatial coordinates; overlay and combine data from multiple sources; compare remotely sensed data to data from numerical models, calibration/validation campaigns, and/or other validation data sources; automate some of these tasks.  Construct forward simulations of satellite mission observations, orbital coverage, retrieval algorithm performance, mission design and trade studies.  Construct and test retrieval algorithms.
• Write code to create or adapt models for microwave remote sensing; adapt existing computer models from one programming language to another; run the code; generate plots, tables, and images from the model output; automate some of these tasks; assist with data interpretation.  Document code, algorithms, procedures, and results.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelors degree in a related field and 8 years of relevant experience or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Experience with MATLAB, and Git.  Experience with plotting and visualizing data.
• Familiarity with GIS data.
• Experience with remote sensing data analysis.
• The candidate must have good communication and documentation skills.
• The candidate must be able to work independently with little oversight.
• The candidate must be comfortable with reaching out to other research groups and data stakeholders to acquire and work with ancillary datasets.  This will require communicating in person, over the phone, through virtual meetings, and emails with people at a variety of external institutions.

Desired Qualifications:

• Ability to support airborne instrument campaigns as an instrument operator.  It is desired that a candidate have the interest, physical ability, and necessary medical status to become cleared for airborne work.
• Masters degree in physics, GIS, electrical engineering or similar field of study.
• Remote sensing experience, especially with microwave data.
• Experience with airborne instrument datasets.
• Some Python experience is desired, but not required.
• NCCS computing experience is desirable.

EOE, including disability/vets

Physical Requirements:  While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to stand, walk, and use hands to touch, handle or feel objects, tools or controls. The employee frequently is required to talk and hear and occasionally required to reach with hands and arms and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. Must regularly lift and/or move up to 10 pounds, and occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and the ability to adjust focus.