Clarification from the agency

This position is open to all qualified candidates. First consideration may be made 14 days after the opening date.

The primary responsibility of the employee is to act as a technical advisor and provide related support perform statistical analysis and prepare datasets of enriched / tagged full text articles to be used as training and validating material for machine / deep learning models created by ADS developers. This work will enable the ADS to create new services that will impact the astronomy and astrophysics community. The enriched datasets will be publicly shared to engage a broader audience in creating better models, fueling research in other domains such as computer science or bibliometrics.

Duties may include, but are not limited to:

• Function as a part of a team to develop and execute statistical analysis with the ADS corpus and external data such as the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus and/or the AAS Facilities keywords
• Manually label, tag, and classify documents, paragraphs and words, as well as enrich the ADS data holdings following certain directives
• Prepare training and validating datasets for machine / deep learning models to perform tasks such as paper classification, sentiment analysis, and/or named entity recognition
• Document all the steps involved in creating datasets and participate in the organization of public machine / deep learning challenges
• Perform other duties as may be required

Conditions of employment

• Must participate in direct deposit/electronic funds for salary payment
• Pre- and post-appointment background investigation is required.

Basic Requirements:

A. Degree: in one or a combination of astronomy, physics, mathematics, space science, or electronics. The course work must have included differential and integral calculus and 12 semester hours in astronomy and/or physics.

OR

B. Combination of education and experience -- at least 30 semester hours of courses equivalent to a major in any combination of astronomy, space science, physics, mathematics, and electronics, with required course work as shown in A above, plus appropriate experience or additional education.

In addition to the basic requirements, candidates for the grade 11 must also possess one of the following:

A. Master's or equivalent graduate degree; or

B. Minimum of one year specialized experience equivalent to at least grade 9 in the normal line of progression for this occupation.  Specialized experience is experience that has equipped the applicant with the particular competencies/knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully perform the duties of the position such as developing Python scripts for data analysis.

C. Combination of successfully completed graduate level education and experience equivalent to the above.

Qualifications

Qualification requirements are derived from the Office of Personnel Management's Qualification Standards Handbook for General Schedule Positions viewable on the web at http://www.opm.gov/qualifications. Qualification requirements must be met within 30 days after the closing date of announcement.

How you will be evaluated

You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.

You will be evaluated to determine if you meet the minimum qualifications required; and on the extent to which your application shows that you possess the criteria associated with this position as defined below.

• Knowledge of the concepts, principles and practices in the field of astrophysicist as might be evidenced by a Master’s Degree in astronomy / astrophysics
• Knowledge of the astrophysics publication process and the typical structure of theoretical and observational papers
• Knowledge of the Linux operating system and the Python programming language
• Knowledge of statistical and data analysis techniques and scientific packages such as numpy, scipy, pandas, and scikit-learn
• Ability to generate proper documentation and present results in professional meetings
• Knowledge of research methods in astrophysics/physics