Application Developer

Caltech is a world-renowned science and engineering institute that marshals some of the world's brightest minds and most innovative tools to address fundamental scientific questions. We thrive on finding and cultivating talented people who are passionate about what they do. Join us and be a part of the diverse Caltech community.

Job Summary

IPAC/NExScI, part of the Physics, Math, and Astronomy Division at Caltech, is a science operations and analysis service organization for NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP) projects. NExScI facilitates the timely and successful execution of exoplanet science by providing software infrastructure, science operations, and consulting to ExEP projects and their user communities. NExScI administers and schedules NASA's portion of time on the Keck telescopes, and operates four archives: the Keck Observatory Archive, the NASA Exoplanet Archive, the NEID high-precision radial velocity archive, and the Exoplanet Follow-up Observing Program (ExoFOP). NExScI helps to administer the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program and runs the Sagan Summer Workshop.

IPAC is seeking a full-time Application Developer based in Pasadena for the Keck Observatory Archive (KOA). KOA archives all data acquired at the twin 10-m telescopes of the W. M. Keck Observatory (WMKO), a world-class Observatory situated at Maua Kea, Hawaii, and is a collaboration between NExScI and the Observatory. Come join a vibrant team of scientists and developers at NExScI and in Hawaii that make KOA data accessible to the astronomy community to enable new groundbreaking research. KOA is entering an exciting new phase as it prepares to serve increasingly large and complex data sets delivered by new instruments, as well as serve follow-up observations from NASA missions such as the recently launched Nancy Grace Roman Telescope.

KOA Responsibilities

The KOA team is responsible for ensuring the health of the archive and accessibility of the data:

• Ensuring that the archive’s query infrastructure and services are performant and support the rapidly growing archive holdings.
• Delivering and maintaining tools for the community.
• Maintaining and operating archive services, including ensuring that newly acquired data are ingested in near-real time.
• Providing user support, including a Help Desk, providing documentation, hosting tutorials, and presenting webinars.

Essential Job Duties

As a NExScI Application Developer, you will work with the engineering and scientific team members to develop systems that serve data to archive users. Your work will, in part, involve exploring the use of agentic AI to deliver these systems. Your job duties include the following:

• Support the development of new query infrastructures and end user services that offer fast access to complex data sets.
• Extending the archive infrastructure to ingest and organize scientific data into the archive.
• Automating and improving the management of our development environment through improved CI/CM processes within the GitHub repository.
• Implement systems for software library and OS version controls.
• Implement logging and metrics for reporting and status monitoring.
• Streamline deployment of software into test and production environments, through continuous integration, and troubleshoot runtime issues.

Basic Qualifications

If you have the following in your background, then we want to hear about your interest in joining our team:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• A minimum of two years of relevant professional or academic experience in modern software engineering.
• Expertise in Python and Linux/UNIX environments.
• Experience with modern development and deployment tools, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Jenkins.
• Knowledge of configuration management practices and tools such as Git/GitHub and Jira.
• Strong communication, interpersonal and teamwork skills, and the ability to work effectively in collaborative environments.

Preferred Qualifications

Beyond these basic qualifications, there are a set of skills and experiences that will add to your ability to contribute to the role and responsibilities of an Application Developer. The following might give you a head start here, but even if these do not describe you or your experience, we would still like to hear from you:

• Master’s degree in Astronomy, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Sciences, or a related field.
• Expertise in Unix/Linux scripting.
• Experience with web server administration, operations, and cloud services.
• Expertise with databases and SQL.
• Knowledge of AI Large Language Models (LLMs).
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and modern, cloud-based development environments.

Required Documents

• Cover Letter
• Resume
• Contact information for three professional references, including full names and email addresses

Application Details

• This is an on-site position at the Caltech campus in Pasadena, California. Remote workdays are typically allowed 1-2 days per week.
• Applications are due by November 4, 2026.

Life at IPAC and Caltech

Caltech is an award-winning workplace and one of the best places to work in the greater Los Angeles area. We offer an exciting and dynamic work environment, career development opportunities, competitive pay programs, great benefits, and the opportunity to participate in many campus programs and activities.

People choose to work at IPAC for many reasons, and the casual, employee-centric culture often leads to fulfilling, long-term careers and lasting relationships. We seek the best and brightest talent to join our workforce and become members of our community.