Postdoc positions - Calibration data scientist & Calibration instrument scientist - MPI for AstronomyClosing date: 2026-07-31

Contact: Dr. Joerg-Uwe Pott The Galaxies and Cosmology department seeks two exceptionally motivated and skilled experimental astrophysicists with practical experience in developing optical instrumentation. We seek to strengthen our team to build and exploit the calibration unit (MCA) and the warm optical relay of the ELT first-light instrument MICADO.

MICADO is a near-infrared, adaptive-optics assisted imager and spectrograph with exceptional scientific capabilities.▸ moreSpecific duties: will depend on the particular experience and strengths of the candidate, the above distinction between calibration data scientist and instrument scientist is somewhat arbitrary. But the ideal instrument scientist will lead the practical side of the verification of the MCA subsystem hardware, will setup functional tests of the final hardware (lamps, stages, hexapod, fibres etc.). Whereas the ideal calibration data scientist will explore the raw data quality, verify data reduction steps, interact with the data pipeline development team and contribute to developing data quality assessment.

Duties will benefit from experience with astronomical mission calibration plans, systematic data analysis of larger amount of calibration data, instrument documentation to ESO standards.



Goal is the testing of available MCA hardware and its integration into the overall MICADO instrument to prepare for the preliminary acceptance Europe (PAE) testing at the ESO headquarters in Garching towards the end of the hire.

please check the full and application procedure here:

https://aas.org/jobregister/ad/66053cc5

Academic Job Offer 2187 submitted on Thu Jul 09 09:17:16 GMT 2026

Specific duties: will depend on the particular experience and strengths of the candidate, the above distinction between calibration data scientist and instrument scientist is somewhat arbitrary. But the ideal instrument scientist will lead the practical side of the verification of the MCA subsystem hardware, will setup functional tests of the final hardware (lamps, stages, hexapod, fibres etc.). Whereas the ideal calibration data scientist will explore the raw data quality, verify data reduction steps, interact with the data pipeline development team and contribute to developing data quality assessment.

Duties will benefit from experience with astronomical mission calibration plans, systematic data analysis of larger amount of calibration data, instrument documentation to ESO standards. Goal is the testing of available MCA hardware and its integration into the overall MICADO instrument to prepare for the preliminary acceptance Europe (PAE) testing at the ESO headquarters in Garching towards the end of the hire.

please check the full and application procedure here:

https://aas.org/jobregister/ad/66053cc5

Academic Job Offer 2187 submitted on Thu Jul 09 09:17:16 GMT 2026

📌 Postdoc positions - Calibration data scientist & Calibration instrument scientist - MPI for Astronomy (Ajmer)
🏢 European Astronomical Society
📍 Ajmer