SEPTEMBER 12, 2025

001473SR
Company Description
By working at Harvard University, you join a vibrant community that advances Harvard’s world-changing mission in meaningful ways, inspires innovation and collaboration, and builds skills and expertise. We are dedicated to creating a diverse and welcoming environment where everyone can thrive.

WHY JOIN THE HARVARD FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES?

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is the historic heart of Harvard University. It is the home of Harvard’s undergraduate program (Harvard College, founded in 1636) as well as all of Harvard’s Ph.D. programs (the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, founded in 1872), Harvard Athletics and the Division of Continuing Education. The 40 academic departments and 30+ centers of the FAS support a community unparalleled in its academic excellence across the broadest range of liberal arts and sciences disciplines. Together, the FAS seeks to foster an environment of ambition, curiosity and shared commitment to knowledge and truth that elicits excellence from all members of our community and prepares the next generation of leaders through a transformative educational experience.
Job Description

JOB SUMMARY:

Independently assist in the design, development, maintenance and support of a data management system.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Minimum of two years’ post-secondary education or relevant work experience

ADDITIONAL QUALIFICATIONS AND SKILLS:

• Minimum two years’ additional post-secondary education or relevant work experience
• MSc or PhD in Astronomy, Physics, Information or Computer Science or related fields
• Knowledge of information technology applications, processes, software and equipment
• Advanced knowledge of ETL (Extraction, Transformation, and Loading), reporting and database technologies
• Advanced communication, technical and project management skills
• Demonstrated team performance skills, service mindset approach, and the ability to act as a trusted advisor
• Familiarity with the formatting and utility of astronomical data, coordinate systems, software, and relevant AI tools
• Demonstrated coding, data management, and software experience used in astronomical data analysis, including (but not limited to) Python and Julia, and involvement with open-source software initiatives
• Excellent communication skills and a proven record of work in collaborative environments, as the position includes working directly with researchers, to evaluate, and meet, their data management needs
• Experience with databases, including SQL
• Experience with computing and data storage on cloud services and HPC environments
• Experience with observational astronomical data, particularly big data sets (e.g., from large surveys)

The Harvard College Observatory (HCO) seeks an astronomical Data Curator to: 1) support and maintain curation of data sets generated by HCO researchers; and 2) assist researchers in efficiently integrating access to large cloud-based data sets (e.g. from Rubin, Roman, and other new surveys) and other data sets, including local resources.
The Data Curator will join the staff of the “Seamless Astronomy” effort at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Seamless Astronomy brings together researchers, computer scientists, information scientists, librarians, and visualization experts, all of whom are involved in developing tools and systems to study and enable the next generation of astronomical research.

The Data Curator will:

• Create, maintain, and curate HCO data releases in the Harvard Dataverse and other online repositories. Assist in researcher-friendly curation of the Harvard Plate Stacks database.
• Facilitate access to external national and international datasets and services, integrating cloud-based sources with local research environments.
• In collaboration with Seamless Astronomy faculty leadership, help to design and test software and data management strategies (e.g. what balance of curator/PI time is optimal, what 3rd-party services should be supported (e.g. GitHub, Dataverse, Zenodo, Amazon AWS, etc.)
• Working with leaders representing various HCO faculty groups, implement software and data curation strategies for a variety of projects and data types.
• Ensure HCO’s data-sharing and curation practices meet or exceed the standards of leading external archives, whether hosted internally or externally
• Leverage AI tools to harmonize and integrate datasets, and assist HCO researchers in independently using AI data-management tools
• Participate in meetings with HCO and Harvard data science specialists; perform additional duties as assigned