About the Research Institute ASTRON - Are you interested in working on the world’s largest telescope? An instrument with hundreds of thousands of antennas spread across 50+ stations in Europe. It contributes both to groundbreaking space research and to securing communication systems. At ASTRON, you’ll join a software delivery team of about 16 colleagues—software and hardware engineers, and astronomers—working together in a scrum environment.

About the Role - We currently have openings in both the data acquisition team (LOFAR) and the data access/availability team (Science Data Centre).

Responsibilities (more details per team at the end)

• Software to control hardware components
• Infrastructure for automated updates
• Dashboards with real-time visualizations of the hardware
• CI/CD pipelines
• Tooling to make petabyte- to exabyte-scale datasets accessible and searchable.

Qualifications

Team-oriented software engineers who are analytical, pragmatic, and persistent when it comes to proposing new ideas and seeing projects through. Leadership skills are also welcome! If you’re looking for a long-term commitment, want to collaborate with top specialists, and grow into one yourself, ASTRON is the place for you. Key words: fullstack, solid programming experience (Python for Linux, Java, C++, C#), multithreaded software, Prometheus/Grafana, Tango controls, Javascript/Typescript, ReactJS/Angular, PostgreSQL, Docker (Consul/Noma), Gitlab, CI/CD pipelines.

In the LOFAR data acquisition team, you will:

• Do software development and life-cycle maintenance for distributed systems like the LOFAR telescope enabling the astronomers and operators of the telescope to do research
• Improve our relational and/or time-series database technologies (such as PostgreSQL or Prometheus)
• Interpret Interface Control Documents (ICDs) enabling clear communication and a minimum of misunderstanding regarding the design and functionality of components

In the SDC data access/availability team (Science Data Centre), you will be:

• Building products in a scientific international environment
• Working with petabyte or exabyte amounts of data
• Improve our continuous integration and delivery environment through GitLab pipelines
• Improve our infrastructure through infrastructure tooling and/or IaC.

Both teams provide 1st-line support to internal customers as a shared responsibility in the team. Also, both teams apply principles from DevOps, like collaboration, figuring out requirements and timelines, automation, and continuous improvement.

Pay range and compensation package

What we offer: freedom, autonomy, and room to grow; hybrid working in an international environment; 13th month, 42 vacation days, salary €3,600–€5,700 in NWO-I scale 10 (approx. €80k/year). For highly senior profiles, scale 11 may be negotiable (let’s discuss the gap with your current salary).

Equal Opportunity Statement

At ASTRON, we are committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone feels welcome and valued. We encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds, regardless of gender, ethnicity, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic.

While all qualified candidates will be considered, we particularly welcome applications from women and other underrepresented groups in science and technology.