Space Domain Awareness Research Scientist

Job Overview

This announcement will be accepting candidate submissions until 11:45 PM HST, 26 July 2026

Duties for the position include, but are not limited to:

• Serves as a Research Scientist/Physicist for the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing (AMOS) site.
• Leads as the 15th Space Surveillance Squadron’s astronomy instrumentation subject matter expert for the AMOS Novel Technologies and Advanced Research Program and liaison to numerous U.S. Space Force and external partners.
• Provides technical oversight and analysis in the realm of optical design and astronomy instrumentation for new/on-going Space Domain Awareness (SDA) research leveraging a vast array of telescopes, sensors, and computer systems.
• Applies expert knowledge and develops new methods to support validation, improvements, and application of optical hardware for space surveillance and space object acquisition.
• Applies physical principles to problems of instrumentation, measurement, and computation.
• Conducts reduction and analysis of data collected from telescopes and other instrumentation and leverages data science techniques and computational resources to validate system performance and capabilities.
• Uses expertise and ingenuity to perform modeling and simulation in assessing novel technologies and capabilities for mission performance aligned with warfighter needs.
• Collects day and/or night observations from ground-based telescopes.
• Performs astronomical instrumentation development and optical design to improve SDA capabilities.
• Leverages expertise to research novel techniques in the astronomical community; develops, implements, installs, and/or tests new optical sensors, cameras, and other telescope instruments.
• Implements decisions on investments of research funding toward developing novel SDA technology.
• Evaluates contractor, in-house/outside laboratory programs, ensuring technical accuracy of proposed solutions.
• Provides insight into development of annual execution & programmatic requirements, while maintaining far-sighted vision of future site capability needs.
• Delivers inputs into programmatic metrics such as cost, schedule, performance, risk-opportunity management.
• Develops briefing materials to inform leadership, contractor partners and stakeholders of relevant program status and details.

Required Qualifications

• United States Citizenship.
• Must possess a professional science or engineering (S&E) degree from an accredited academic institution.
• Must have at least 3 years of specialized experience at the DR-02/GS-13 or equivalent grade level. Specialized experience is experience providing the capacity and skills for working independently, leading collaborative events, working in teams and using these approaches to find and solve complex problems. Such experience may also include training personnel, collaborative process facilitation, innovation design practice, writing background, editing job roles, continuous process improvement credentials, multi-agency liaison work, published work in refereed technical journals, and/or briefings to large groups.
• Must be able to obtain and maintain a Special Sensitive security clearance.

Desired Qualifications

• A MS or PhD (preferred) in Astronomy, Astrophysics, Physics, Optical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or similar engineering discipline.
• At least mid-level (5+ years) experience in astronomical instrumentation, optical design, ground-based telescope observations, imaging sciences, data science, and/or computational modeling and simulation is highly desired.

Telework

Yes, this position is eligible for situational telework; as determined by agency policy

Eligible for a Referral Bonus?

No

Series

1310

1330

Additional Information

• Relocation costs or other incentives may be available and considered by the organization.

Requisition Number 13467

Posting End Date

07/26/2026