Optical Instrument Scientist

Are you our new colleague?
Are you an enthusiastic optical researcher or engineer who would like to work on space instrumentation? Are you interested in the development of satellite instruments that will enhance the capability to measure aerosols and trace gasses in the Earth atmosphere? Or instruments that will characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets? Or perhaps in developing new technologies that allow more compact instrument designs? Are you the person who wants to support our scientists in their research through your technical skills, creativity and know-how? Then we would like to see you strengthen our team and help us achieve our goals.

Your position and team within SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research
You will be part of the Opt-X section which is part of the Instrument Science Group at SRON. The Opt-X section currently has 11 staff members. Together with scientists and engineers it serves different space projects at SRON. Typical tasks include analyzing and modeling the performance of an optical instrument, the testing and calibration of optical instruments or their subsystems, the monitoring of the instrument performance in-flight or developing new ideas and solutions in order to realize something that has never been made before.

You will work on one or several of the following topics:

• Detector characterization and calibration of a spectropolarimeter instrument for the Copernicus CO2 monitoring mission;
• Mission performance center for the SPEXone instrument for the NASA PACE mission;
• Detector testing and analysis for the preparation of greenhouse gas measurement satellite instruments;
• Research on stray light theory and testing of optical metasurfaces and compressive sensing for Earth observation
• General investigation into optical systems and components for satellites instruments for Earth observation, astronomy and exoplanet detection.

The choice of tasks to which you will be assigned to will be highly dependent on your qualifications and background.