Mathematician, Mechanical Engineer or similar

Have you (almost) completed your degree studies? Are you inspired by space exploration and keen to pursue a career in this exciting field? If so, perhaps you should take a closer look at the German Trainee Programme. Organised by DLR, it offers you the chance to work shoulder to shoulder with experts from the 22 member states of ESA - keeping your finger on the pulse of Europe’s space programmes. Over a period up to 24 months, you will actively contribute to the latest research and/or technology projects. This is complemented by a generous scholarship. What better way to launch your career in international space business? The next GTP commences on 1st February 2019. ESA’s Mission Analysis Section is based at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt. Mission Analysis has a key role in the definition of ESA missions around the Earth, the Moon, another planer or its moons or a libration point. The target orbit, the transfer, the launch, the mass and propellant budget, the optimal manoeuvre strategy using high or low thrust propulsion, and numerous other products that are vital for the design of a spacecraft are derived by Mission Analysis. Trainees in the Mission Analysis Section are members in project teams and work on demanding tasks with a high level of autonomy, they may provide support to feasibility studies for future ESA missions or contribute to the planning or operations of an actually flying mission that is being operated by ESOC. Tasks:
The numerical computation tasks undertaken by the Mission Analysis Section strongly benefit from massive parallelisation. Some effort has been taken to employ the computational power on graphical processing units via a programming approach based on the CUDA platform. The trainee shall continue and extend this work and implement a proper front-end for different application cases, integrating it into the Section's orbit software facility. Some actual applications can be investigated during the traineeship. Possible application cases are the analysis of problems with a stochastic component, such as the dynamics of satellite mega-constellations or the analysis of the long-term evolution of spacecraft orbits in the solar system or within the system of moons of a gas giant.

• applicants shall have a solid knowledge of mathematics and classical mechanics and significant experience in scientific programming. Knowledge of massive parallelisation using GPUs and CUDA is an advantage.
• German citizenship is absolutely necessary
• applicants should have just completed (conclusion not older than two years) or be in their final year of a university course at Master's level in a technical or scientific discipline
• candidates must be fluent in English or French, the official languages of the Agency

We look forward to your e-mail application in English, citing GTP-2019-OPS-GFA to GTP@dlr.de.
Closing date for this position is 6th September 2018. The interviews are tentatively scheduled for week 45/2018. Please visit the German Trainee Programme page for details of our application procedures. Your application should consist of a motivation letter and your CV only (CV exclusively in Europass format). Unfortunately we cannot consider further documents. Disabled applicants with equivalent qualifications will be given preferential treatment. If you have any initial questions, please feel free to contact Ms. Larissa Seidlez: larissa.seidlez@dlr.de.