Senior Remote Sensing Data Scientist, Cal/Val

Salary: $192,000 - 213,000 per year Requirements:

• PhD with at least 3 years of industry experience, MS with at least 6 years, or BS with at least 8 years.
• At least 4 years of experience calibrating imaging instruments.
• Hands-on experience working with complex data from new imaging instruments.
• Track record of shipping and operating production data or analytics pipelines for scientific data, including monitoring, logging, alerting, and automated testing; remote sensing, calibration, or measurement-instrument experience is preferred.
• Experience moving scientific or numerical algorithms, such as calibration, image-processing, or signal-processing algorithms, from prototype to maintainable production software, including unit and integration testing and quantitative validation against reference data.
• Strong Python software engineering skills, including modern packaging, testing frameworks such as pytest, version control, code review, and CI/CD workflows.
• Strong grounding in statistics and applied mathematics, with sufficient instrument physics knowledge to reason about calibration algorithms, radiometric error budgets, diagnostics, and automated quality visualizations.
• Ability to work effectively with a distributed, interdisciplinary team and thrive in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Preferred: experience with mid-wave infrared instruments and data processing, and with radiometric, spectral, or geometric calibration of on-orbit imaging instruments.
• Preferred: knowledge of remote-sensing science and radiometric calibration, including SI traceability and uncertainty analysis.
• Preferred: experience with detector characterization, calibration campaign design, and/or geospatial data processing.
• Preferred: familiarity with geospatial tools and formats such as XArray, COG, and NetCDF, and scientific visualization or dashboarding tools such as Plotly, Panel, Streamlit, or Grafana.
• Preferred: familiarity with containerization and workflow orchestration tools such as Docker, Kubernetes, Airflow, Prefect, or Argo.
• Preferred: experience with cloud-native systems and infrastructure as code; AWS experience is preferred.
• Preferred: experience handling terabyte-scale datasets and expertise in geospatial analytics.
• This position requires access to export-controlled information. Applicants must meet one of the stated eligibility pathways: qualify as a U.S. person, be eligible to access the information without export authorization, or be eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required U.S. government export authorization.

• Design, build, and operate production calibration and image-processing pipelines for multispectral infrared imagery from our FireSat and SBEM missions.
• Turn calibration algorithms—including dark and offset correction, non-uniformity correction, radiometric gain and linearity, bad-pixel identification and replacement, and band-to-band registration—into robust production code. Own testing across unit, integration, and regression suites using representative laboratory and on-orbit data.
• Analyze pre-launch and on-orbit calibration data to derive, validate, and track calibration coefficients. Build monitoring, alerting, and automated visualizations for calibration accuracy, noise, uniformity, and image-quality metrics.
• Contribute to CI/CD, deployment, containerization, and observability tools that support reliable production calibration services.
• Partner with calibration scientists and the IR Instrument team to plan and carry out SBEM pre-launch and on-orbit calibration campaigns and productionize algorithms.
• Promote sound engineering practices across the calibration codebase, including code review, version control, documentation, versioned calibration coefficients and lookup tables, and ongoing improvements to test coverage and reliability.
• Collaborate across calibration science, IR instrument engineering, and product teams to develop and maintain operational calibration services and protect the scientific quality, quantitative validation, and radiometric integrity of our IR data products, including uncertainty budgets and cross-calibration against on-board calibrators, blackbody references, and vicarious calibration sites.
• Learn new topics as needed, including measurement techniques, geospatial data engineering, software engineering, and customer-domain considerations.

• Airflow
• AWS
• CI/CD
• Cloud
• Docker
• Grafana
• Support
• Kubernetes
• Python
• Security
• pytest

More:

We are hiring a Data Scientist for Muon Spaces IR Data Products team to develop the on-orbit calibration system for our infrared imaging missions. Our team turns spacecraft instrument data into analytics and data products for end users. The role initially supports calibration software and operational tooling for the three-satellite FireSat Initial Operating Capability constellation, and also develops production calibration infrastructure for our next-generation SBEM instruments. The successful candidate will collaborate on SBEM pre-launch calibration software and test harnesses, then lead deployment and on-orbit operation of its calibration pipelines as the program advances toward its planned 2027 launch. This is a hybrid position based in our Denver, Colorado office, with three on-site days each week. The salary range is $192,000–$213,000, plus equity and comprehensive benefits. Full-time benefits include medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k), disability and life insurance, three weeks of vacation for new employees, 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time, and paid parental leave. Founded in 2021, we design, build, and operate low Earth orbit satellite constellations that deliver mission-critical data, supporting applications from climate monitoring to national security. Our integrated technology stack helps customers accelerate time to orbit and improve remote-sensing performance. We are committed to equal employment opportunity, a diverse workforce, and reasonable accommodations during the application and interview process. We are registered to hire in AL, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, IL, IA, ID, MD, MA, MI, MN, MO, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OR, PA, TN, TX, VT, VA, and WA.

last updated 41 week of 2026