DiRAC Postdoctoral Fellowship

Seattle, WA

Oct 16, 2026

Nov 30, 2026 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time

The Department of Astronomy invites applications for the DiRAC Postdoctoral Fellowship, a postdoctoral scholar position in the Institute for Data-intensive Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology (DiRAC), with an anticipated start date of September 1, 2027. We seek applicants who demonstrate commitment to excellence in research and service in a diverse and inclusive academic community. The successful candidates will join us on a full-time basis for a twelve-month (i.e., year-round) appointment, renewable upon mutual agreement and subject to satisfactory performance and funding availability, for up to 3 in total.

Two positions are available.

DiRAC is a research institute within the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington. Its mission is to expand the frontiers of astrophysics enabled by breakthroughs in large surveys, data-intensive algorithms, and software. The Institute comprises seven faculty and senior fellows, and over 30 postdoctoral researchers, research scientists, software engineers, and graduate students. DiRAC leads the construction of Rubin Observatory’s time domain and solar system processing pipelines, is a founding Hub of LINCC, the LSST Interdisciplinary Network for Computing and Collaboration , co-leads the LINCC Frameworks program to provide advances in software infrastructure needed to enable LSST analyses, and hosts the LINCC Science Platform .

The base salary range for this position will be $5,834 – 7,084permonth(70,008 – $85,008 per year), commensurate with experience and qualifications, or as mandated by a U.S. Department of Labor prevailing wage determination. Postdoctoral scholars are represented by UAW 4121 and are subject to the collective bargaining agreement. For more information, please visit the University of Washington Labor Relations website. Appointees solely employed and paid directly by a non-UW entity are not UW employees and are not eligible for UW or Washington State employee benefits.

The successful candidates will be expected to:

Be ready to engage in self-directed research that complements the work done at UW’s Institute for Data-Intensive Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology (DiRAC). Active areas include:
Transients and Variable Star Science, Solar System Science, Milky Way Structure, Extragalactic Science (including studies of high-redshift dust and quiescent galaxies), Cosmology, and Astronomical Software Development;

Be excited by the prospect of leading and participating in early science with Rubin Observatory and the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) about the synergies between Rubin, Gaia, JWST Surveys, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and Euclid;

Be enthusiastic about exploring and applying new statistical, computational, or machine learning/AI techniques to astronomical data sets, and extending current methodology to be applicable in the era of big data;

Look forward to collaborating with software engineers and researchers across all areas of astrophysics, as well as in fields such as computer science and statistics;

Be eager to participate in the Institute community and utilize the wide variety of resources available for their research, including, but not limited to, UW’s high-performance computing platforms (Klone and Tillicum) and telescopes at the Apache Point Observatory.

Candidates will be considered across a range of research interests, including these active areas:
Applicants should demonstrate excellence in research that complements or builds upon ongoing research directions within the DiRAC…