General Open Orbital Dynamics Platform scientific software developer

There is a vacancy for an up to 2 year position for a scientific programmer / software engineer for the General Open Orbital Dynamics Platform project within the OmegaCEN Astronomical Science Data Center at the University of Groningen. This is the expertise center for data-intensive astronomy and astronomical information technology. It is based at the Donald Smits Center for Information Technology and the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute at the University of Groningen and ATG-Europe.

What are you going to do?

The developer will be part of a five person team that will develop the The General Open Orbital Dynamics (GOOD) Platform proposal, a major collaborative research initiative between the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and the University of Groningen (RUG), has been awarded funding and commenced in the second quarter of 2026. The 36-month project aims to transform the field of orbital dynamics by creating a fully transparent, open, and reproducible platform for data and solution archiving.

The team will develop GOOD-WISE components for data models, workflows, and databases used across applications, adapting WISE technology from image surveys to solar system use, including embedding Tudat configurations in automated and user-driven pipelines. The team will coordinate with the Tudat team and the developer will contribute to the preliminary Tudat/GOOD-WISE integration. Application- and model-specific extensions will be made to support digital services and functionalities for human-made objects (spacecraft and space debris) and for natural celestial bodies (planets, moons, asteroids, etc.). This includes interfaces for extracting asteroid tracks from astronomical survey archives like Euclid, LSST, ESO surveys and JWST. This includes completion of complete data models, workflows, and database structures (preliminary before beta launch). Iimplementation of automatic analysis updates