Junior Professional in Autonomous and -board Data System in to EO Missions

Position: Junior Professional in Autonomous and Intelligent On-board Data System in Support to EO Missions
Location: Noordwijk

This post is part of ESA’s Junior Professional Programme. ESA is looking for enthusiastic candidates with up to 3 years of relevant professional experience after their Master's degree to join ESA for a four-year assignment. During this time, you will be actively working and learning on the job and will benefit from valuable mobility and developmental opportunities that will prepare you for a successful career ject to performance, it is therefore the intention to offer you an indefinite contract which will start at the end of the four years.

Developmental assignments form an integral part of the Junior Professional Programme and may entail a temporary relocation to another ESA establishment or other location.

Junior Professional in Autonomous and Intelligent On-board Data System in Support to EO Missions
Description
As a Junior Professional in autonomous and intelligent onboard data systems in support of EO Missions, you will report to the ROSE-L System, Operations and Performance Manager.

The Earth Observation missions currently in development at ESA include a number of projects featuring high data rates with very stringent availability, timeliness and responsiveness requirements.

Notable examples of such missions include the ROSE-L (Radar Observing System for Europe at L-band) and Sentinel-1 Next Generation constellations part of the Copernicus Programme.

You will play a forward-looking role in defining the evolution of the onboard systems and their path towards greater autonomy and responsiveness, spanning faster reprogramming, reduced time-to-data and real-time onboard intelligence. This includes assessing the application of enhanced functionality such as optical inter-satellite links (laser communications), AI-driven edge computing and space data centres, as well as the related flight and ground segment interfaces.

The results of your work will help to shape how the capabilities of Copernicus and other EO systems will evolve.

Initially assigned to the Copernicus ROSE-L System Section, ROSE-L Project Division, Copernicus Space Segment Programme, Earth Observation Projects Department, Directorate of Earth Observation Programmes, you will leverage the capabilities of the End-to-End Simulator (E2ES) and Ground Prototype Processor (GPP) to support the above forward-looking activities.

Duties
Your tasks and responsibilities will include the following:

You will begin by immersing yourself in the ROSE-L mission’s scope, requirements and system architecture, quickly becoming a proficient user of the End-to-End Simulator and Ground Prototype Processor (E2ES/GPP), the simulation platform that will be your primary tool for exploring future enhancements and evolution.

You will actively engage with the E2ES/GPP development and procurement process through progress meetings, technical reviews and factory acceptance tests, building the deep system understanding needed to drive future innovation.

As your expertise in the E2ES/GPP deepens, you will run end-to-end mission scenarios to evaluate SAR and system performance under a range of operating conditions. This work will directly support the ROSE-L development and in-orbit commissioning, while simultaneously building the simulation know-how needed to explore future concepts.

In parallel, you will participate in the ROSE-L SAR instrument on-ground characterisation and testing activities, gaining first‑hand knowledge of AIT processes.

You will translate characterisation results into updated sets of input parameters, ensuring the simulation environment faithfully represents the real instrument, a prerequisite for credible future‑mission trade‑off studies.

From year two, your focus will shift decisively to the future while broadening your perspective to embrace additional ESA EO SAR missions such as Sentinel-1 Next Generation and Harmony.

Drawing on your E2ES/GPP expertise, you will support the assessment of how the use of new space and ground services and infrastructure can improve SAR mission autonomy and responsiveness.

Using the simulator as a supporting tool, you will evaluate the use of onboard AI and edge‑computing architectures, including in‑space data centres and…