Data Access Engineer

🇺🇸 Chapel Hill, NC 🕑 Full-Time 💰 $51K - $100K 💻 Software Engineering 🗓️ January 5th, 2026

Kafka PostgreSQL Python

Edtech.com's Summary

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is hiring a Data Access Engineer. The role involves building and scaling software systems to deliver data products from the Argus Array telescope to astronomers worldwide, integrating cloud services and distributed storage, managing alert distribution systems, and overseeing data releases with a focus on accessibility and data integrity.

Highlights

Develop and scale data access pipelines for the Argus Array telescope's large-scale astronomical data.
Integrate with cloud services, distributed storage networks, and GPU-accelerated pipelines.
Lead production deployment of streaming alert distribution systems for real-time astronomical phenomena notifications.
Oversee periodic releases of extensive light curve datasets ensuring data versioning and integrity.
Contribute to API-first user interfaces for internal quality assurance and public access.
Requires advanced Python expertise (5+ years) and experience designing high-throughput distributed message systems (3+ years).
Experience with software development lifecycle including version control, documentation, and testing is essential.
Preferred knowledge includes cloud-based relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, Apache Kafka) and time-series databases geared towards astronomical datasets.
Minimum qualification is a relevant post-Baccalaureate degree or equivalent experience with demonstrated independent research productivity.
Position offers a hiring range between $51,000 and $100,000 per year.