Astronomer & Space Scientist

About the role

We are seeking astronomers and space science experts to evaluate and improve AI language models on domain‑specific topics. This position is with SME Careers, an AI data services company, and will involve future projects as they arise.

Key responsibilities

• Evaluate AI‑generated responses for scientific accuracy, logical soundness, completeness, and clarity across astronomy and space science topics.
• Challenge language models with realistic scenarios, calculations, and research‑style reasoning tasks.
• Review and refine AI‑generated prompts, model answers, and step‑by‑step solutions, ensuring correct units, assumptions, and uncertainty handling.
• Provide structured feedback identifying conceptual errors, bad assumptions, missing constraints, misused formulas, unit mistakes, or misleading claims.
• Help shape AI communication standards for scientific content, especially regarding assumptions, uncertainty, and limits of inference.

Required profile

• 4+ years of professional experience in astronomy, astrophysics, planetary science, space physics, heliophysics, cosmology, observational astronomy, mission science/operations, instrumentation, or a closely related domain.
• Deep knowledge of core fundamentals such as classical mechanics, electromagnetism, radiative processes, orbital mechanics, coordinate systems, time standards, statistics, and scientific modeling assumptions.
• Strong ability to sanity‑check results (orders of magnitude, unit consistency, limiting cases, error propagation) and communicate limitations responsibly.
• Bachelor’s degree in physics, astronomy, space science, engineering, or a closely related field (Master’s/PhD strongly preferred).
• Experience with AI data training, annotation, red‑team­ing, or evaluating AI‑generated technical content is a strong plus.

Required skills

• Python
• NumPy
• SciPy
• Data pipelines and catalog query tools
• Photometry and spectroscopy concepts
• Familiarity with mission datasets