South African Radio Astronomy Observatory Vacancies
Great Companies Are Built With Great People

SARAO’s values are:

Passion for Excellence
World-class service
People-centred
Respect
Integrity and Ethics
Accountability

Vacant Positions at The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO)

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CAREERS AT SARAO

A key career opportunity is waiting for you to be part of one of the world’s largest research infrastructure projects!

The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory is ready to move forward with its next phase, the MeerKAT Extension project and we are looking for talented individuals with the propensity to build, analyse, construct, engineer, mechanise, develop, investigate scientifically and advance technologically.

Working as part of a coordinated global effort, you will be exposed to some of the most advanced engineering technologies and scientific programming in the world. You should have a strong interest in scientific research infrastructure and the ability to swiftly adapt to new technologies and highly advanced techniques.

If you have skills in Python, Linux, CUDA, HPC, Radio Frequency, and other high-performance computing disciplines, we are looking for you. Kanban is the methodology of choice, although you will be working within a broader ecosystem using SAFe as a top-level framework.

Are you ready to be part of building one of the world’s largest research infrastructure projects? After the successful completion of the MeerKAT radio telescope, SARAO is about to start the construction phase of the MeerKAT Extension project.

The following positions are available to expand our existing team to bolster our capacity to deliver on our construction commitments:

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Didn’t find a job you’re looking for?

Come build the world’s largest radio telescope with us

The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), a facility of the National Research Foundation, is responsible for managing all radio astronomy initiatives and facilities in South Africa, including the MeerKAT Radio Telescope in the Karoo, and the Geodesy and VLBI activities at the HartRAO facility. SARAO also coordinates the African Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network (AVN) for the eight SKA partner countries in Africa, as well as South Africa’s contribution to the infrastructure and engineering planning for the Square Kilometre Array Radio Telescope. To maximise the return on South Africa’s investment in radio astronomy, SARAO is managing programmes to create capacity in radio astronomy science and engineering research, and the technical capacity required to support site operations.

PAPER

Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Re-ionisation project. The PAPER project at South Africa’s Karoo astronomy site is a 64-antenna array.

MeerKAT Telescopes

MeerKAT is a radio interferometer located in the Northern Cape province of South Africa (at 30 deg South, 21 deg East) consisting of 64 dishes with baselines of up to 8 km. Its superb sensitivity, ~2000 baselines, centrally concentrated distribution (~3/4 of the dishes are located in a 1 km diameter core), substantial field of view (~1 deg FWHM at 1.4 GHz), and unblocked aperture design, make it uniquely suited to a variety of studies.